gimley reviewed The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier
Review of 'The enigma of reason' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The first enigma I want to address is why I would read an evo-psych book since I don't accept its premises and find they are usually poorly reasoned. I will answer by giving reasons and admit up front that they were not why I read it but are being manufactured to answer the question I just asked.
(That I would do so supports one of the books premises, namely that reasons are mainly come up with afterwords, and not in making a decision.)
That answer is as follows: Actually, there are many times I wanted to abandon the book and yet I did not. When I was most bored, I found it soon picked up again. I thought it atypical in that it was well argued and had an interesting premise--that being, how did something as "broken" as reason ever evolve in the first place. That's a question. The answer, …
The first enigma I want to address is why I would read an evo-psych book since I don't accept its premises and find they are usually poorly reasoned. I will answer by giving reasons and admit up front that they were not why I read it but are being manufactured to answer the question I just asked.
(That I would do so supports one of the books premises, namely that reasons are mainly come up with afterwords, and not in making a decision.)
That answer is as follows: Actually, there are many times I wanted to abandon the book and yet I did not. When I was most bored, I found it soon picked up again. I thought it atypical in that it was well argued and had an interesting premise--that being, how did something as "broken" as reason ever evolve in the first place. That's a question. The answer, the actual premise, being that it evolved not for the reason we think it did while we're reasoning (and reasoning about reasoning) but for its survival value (which turns out also not to be what we think it is, but is instead concerned with how we form societies). The reasoning in this book, if it does well in the "marketplace of ideas", will help its authors increase their presence in the gene pool. (Well, perhaps not these particular authors who, for all I know, aren't going to be having more children, but as some sort of appropriate evo-psych generalization of that idea.
It also attacked the Thinking Fast and Slow guys (I enjoy seeing evo-psych people attack each other--this enjoyment, they would argue, is somehow also related to its survival value). In fact, there's much to like about this book if you enjoy a nice debunking, and I do. I almost want to give it another star now.