Hugo Mercier is a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, working in the Cognitive Science Institute Marc Jeannerod in Lyon. Dan Sperber is a researcher in the Departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University, Budapest, and in the Institut Jean Nicod at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
Original, persuasive, and deftly argued, The Enigma of Reason puts
forward a new and rather surprising thesis that the proper
(evolutionary) functioning of reasoning is to persuade others via
argumentation. This book will challenge your preconceptions about
the mind's internal logic and why it exists. A compelling read and
a novel contribution to the literature on reasoning.--Clark
Barrett, University of California, Los Angeles
Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has
this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an
essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way? In The
Enigma of Reason, the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan
Sperber take a stab at answering this question... [Their] argument
runs, more or less, as follows: Humans' biggest advantage over
other species is our ability to cooperate. Cooperation is difficult
to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any
individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason
developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical
problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in
collaborative groups.--Elizabeth Kolbert "New Yorker "
The Enigma of Reason is a comprehensive and well‐motivated overview
of the contemporary scientific and philosophical literature on
reasoning. This is especially timely as we struggle to make sense
of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding
beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.-- (05/09/2017)
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