Animals all need to communicate with one another, both with their own kind and with other beasts like potential predators.
Humans have evolved particularly powerful mechanisms to do so, along with brain modules that enable tool use. Various brain models dedicated to language, and understanding social or natural processes, started connecting with each other at some point. Each module became capable of using the output of other modules as input.
For example, our grasp of natural and social processes became concepts in language, and we started using social connections and language as tools. We ended up with a cognitive mechanism we know as reason.
Still, what exactly is reason?
The best description I have heard (from psychologist Hugo Mercier) is that it is the provision of a reason (or justification) for your beliefs or behaviour. Giving reasons forces the communicator to at least attempt to make sense, it makes the communication more convincing and it is amazingly flexible.
Reasoning is the construction of a convincing argument based on those reasons, and rationality is our intuition as to the plausibility or trustworthiness of the reasons or arguments.
The ancient Greeks were arguably the first to realise that we could bootstrap our capacity to reason to higher levels. They started thinking about thinking and gave us the culture of meta-thinking i.e. the beginnings of philosophy, logic, mathematics, and rhetoric. They also contributed to early science, literature, art, politics, and technology.
All of these enabled us to do so much more with our thinking powers than we were capable of before. Eventually other societies advanced engineering and law (Romans) and science (western Europe) to unimaginable new heights.
Yet our reason is not flawless. Sometimes people fool us. We are prone to a host of cognitive biases e.g. the confirmation bias. Too many of us believe things that others think should be utterly unbelievable e.g. the earth is flat or that witches made a crop fail. Then there is the curious phenomenon that greater knowledge and intelligence seems to widen, rather than shrink, differences in opinions.
Stock of wisdom
Why have we not found a stock of wisdom that the wise agree on?
One obvious answer is that reality is so complicated and opaque that we are bound to keep making mistakes and spotting corrections. That process must generate a never-ending variety in opinions, along with intense competition for the rewards due to discoverers of truth.
A popular theory is that thinking is too difficult and time consuming, so we resort to short cuts or rules of thumb. Among these are ‘pick the majority view, copy what competent people or high-status people think.’
We assume status is recognition by others for competence we have not personally witnessed.
This theory implies that gullibility evolved because it helps us get knowledge at little cost. It turns out that gullibility creates too many opportunities for others to rip you off for that to be true.
Mercier has published convincing evidence that we are not gullible. On the contrary he says we are too resistant to persuasion and tend to be insufficiently open to promising ideas.
Why are some ideas, including good ones, so hard to get across, while others, including bad ones, so popular?
The main problem is not the mechanism of reason so much as the information it draws on.
People most readily believe what has an intuitive dimension (in the absence of other information, the Earth looks flat), coincides with their pre-existing beliefs and values, has a source with reliable information and ‘my interests’ at heart, and a sound argument.
Furthermore, people are especially open to nonsense when it makes little practical difference to their lives, or when being wrong about something carries no personal price. A disturbing example of this is voting behaviour.
Largely inborn
Pre-existing beliefs and values are largely inborn. For example, political ideology and religiosity are highly heritable – as high as 80% for being ‘born again.’ That said, a person whose only experience with religion is living in a Muslim country – where you have no other information – will be prone to accept the validity of Islam for non-genetic reasons.
Where bad behaviour and crazy belief go together, belief follows behaviour: it is a rationalisation of it. The demand for rationalisations drives mistaken opinions, rather than their supply. People want justification for their own views, and support for their goals, and actively look for it. It looks more rational to give a reason.
Those that meet the demand for rationalisations, by professing belief in an idea, have their own demands. They want to belong to, and have status in, a chosen group. They share ‘truth’ and try to impress, annoy, please, seduce, manipulate, or reassure others. Paradoxically they come to look for the most implausible thing the target person or group believes. One of the most credible signals of being on the side of a given group is to express absurd or odious views that antagonise everyone else.
Reason, one of the things that makes humans unique and special, comes across as being a mere marketplace of rationalisations for inborn impulses and intuitions born of ignorance, a marketplace that includes items of junk.
Yet under the meta-thinking tradition of curiosity, open criticism, strict standards of logical argument and experimental tests against reality, these same mere rationalisations produce miracles.
It is quite incredible how seemingly shaky tools can build such glorious edifices.
I consider Eve, like the mythical Prometheus, to be a hero. What’s that? You insist I give a reason for my opinion? Very well. A widely revered and cited Bronze Age source says Eve is responsible for man’s forced reliance on reason. I double checked.
[Image: by GoldenDayz]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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