The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber.
It's wacky how the brain works; one of my all time favorite papers is Why Do Humans Reason but I forgot the name of the authors. Weird enough when I saw the title of this book, I immediately bought it. Only after reading the first few pages, I realized it was by the same authors.This is one of the most important books of this century. I see this as a follow-up of Damasio's Descartes' Error from the psychological perspective.
The premise of the books is simple:
Reason evolved to help us justify ourselves and to convince others, which is essential for co-operation and communication.
It's wacky how the brain works; one of my all time favorite papers is Why Do Humans Reason but I forgot the name of the authors. Weird enough when I saw the title of this book, I immediately bought it. Only after reading the first few pages, I realized it was by the same authors.This is one of the most important books of this century. I see this as a follow-up of Damasio's Descartes' Error from the psychological perspective.
The premise of the books is simple:
Reason evolved to help us justify ourselves and to convince others, which is essential for co-operation and communication.
The British abolitionists didn't invent most of the arguments against slavery. But they refined them, backed them with masses of evidence, increased their creditability by relying on trustworthy witnesses, and made them more accessible by allowing people to see life through a slave's eyes. Debates, public meetings, and newspapers brought these strengthened arguments to a booming urban population. And it worked. People were convinced not only of the evils of slavery but also of the necessity of doing something about it. They petitioned, gave money, and - with the help of other factors, from economy to international politics - had first the slave trade and then slavery itself banned.
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Yet we do not quite share the pessimism regarding the ability of reason to change people's minds. People do not just provide their own justification and arguments; they also evaluate those of others. As evaluators, people should be able to recognize strong arguments and be swayed by them in all domains, including the moral realm. Clearly, arguments that challenge the moral values of one's community can be met with disbelief, distrust of motives, even down right hostility. Still, on many moral issues, people have been influenced by good arguments, from local politics - for example, how to organize the local school curriculums - to major societal issues - such as abolition of the slave trade.
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