Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.     

The causal explanatory functions of medical diagnoses

Diagnoses in medicine are often taken to serve as explanations of patients’ symptoms and signs. This article examines how they do so. I begin by arguing that although some instances of diagnostic explanation can be formulated as covering law arguments, they are explanatory neither in virtue of their argumentative structures nor in virtue of general regularities between diagnoses and clinical presentations. I then consider the theory that medical diagnoses explain symptoms and signs by identifying their actual causes in particular cases. While I take this to be largely correct, I argue that for a diagnosis to function as a satisfactory causal explanation of a patient’s symptoms and signs, it also needs to be supplemented by understanding the mechanisms by which the identified cause produces the symptoms and signs. This mechanistic understanding comes not from the diagnosis itself, but rather from the theoretical framework within which the physician operates.     

Against explanatory realism

Explanatory realism is the position that all explanations give information about whatever metaphysically determines the explanandum. This view is popular and plays a central role in metaphysics, but in this paper I argue that explanatory realism is false. In Sect. 1 I introduce explanatory realism in its weak and strong versions, and discuss the argumentative work that explanatory realism is used for in contemporary metaphysics. In Sect. 2 I present a series of problem cases for explanatory realism, including explanation by analogy, explanations involving rules, reduction ad absurdum explanations and certain statistical explanations. In Sect. 3 I consider and reject two modified versions of explanatory realism: the position that explanatory realism is true only of explanation in metaphysics, and the position that determinative explanation is the most complete form of explanation. In conclusion I consider explanatory antirealism and explanatory pluralism as alternatives to explanatory realism.     

Transcending the evidentiary boundary: Prediction error minimization,embodied interaction,and explanatory pluralism

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing (PP) perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems.     

Strategy for Dualism

Dualists need to change their argumentative strategies if they wish to make a plausible case for dualism. In particular, dualists should not merely react and respond to physicalist views and arguments; they need to develop their own positive agenda. But neither should they focus their energies on constructing a priori arguments for dualism. Rather, dualists should acknowledge that what supports their view that consciousness exists and is a nonphysical phenomenon is observation, not argumentation. What is needed is a positive account of the nature of consciousness and the indispensable role that it plays in our lives, for it is only by showing the explanatory utility of the nonphysical that dualists can begin to discredit those who would deny its existence. In this paper, I try to give some idea of what such a positive theory of consciousness would look like. In particular, I argue for a theory of consciousness that contains a priori synthetic truths about the ontological nature and causal powers of consciousness.     

Petitioning the King: The Case of Provincial Printers in Eighteenth-Century France

This essay studies an argumentative practice in eighteenth-century France by exploring the persuasiveness of some petitions to obtain printer licences. Those who wanted to enter the printing business in eighteenth-century France had to obtain licences from the King to do so. The French government had established limits to the number of printers it would permit to operate in the realm; hence, there was competition for any vacancy that became open. Thus, the context is that of trained printers in provincial towns, most of them with their own printing equipment, applying to the government in Paris for the highly valued licences to run printing businesses. We examine a small number of the original petitions and give an account of their persuasive capacity by (a) noticing the narrative character of the letters and (b) distinguishing between propositional and affective attitudes. Our view is that a reconstruction of the petitions as reasonable persuasive discourse is possible when it is noticed how the two kinds of attitudes can be combined to promote the same end.     

Constructing Commitment: Brandom's Pragmatist Take on Rule‐Following

According to a standard criticism, Robert Brandom's “normative pragmatics”, i.e. his attempt to explain normative statuses in terms of practical attitudes, faces a dilemma. If practical attitudes and their interactions are specified in purely non‐normative terms, then they underdetermine normative statuses; but if normative terms are allowed into the account, then the account becomes viciously circular. This paper argues that there is no dilemma, because the feared circularity is not vicious. While normative claims do exhibit their respective authors' practical attitudes and thereby contribute towards establishing the normative statuses they are about, this circularity is not a mark of Brandom's explanatory strategy but a feature of social practice of which we theorists partake.     

Full-Time versus Part-Time Employees: Understanding the Links between Work Status, the Psychological Contract, and Attitudes

Research findings comparing the work attitudes of full-time and part-time employees have been inconsistent and inconclusive. Furthermore, empirical studies have tended to be atheoretical, and there are few convincing psychological explanations to explain differences where found. This article tests the psychological contract as an explanatory framework for attitudinal differences across work status (i.e., whether employed on a part-time or full-time basis). The model is tested across samples from two different organizations using structural equation modeling. The analysis reveals that part-time and full-time employees differed on a number of attitudes and that psychological contract fulfillment could be used to explain differences in certain attitudes (e.g., satisfaction) but not others (e.g., affective commitment). Analyses also show that the relationships between psychological contract fulfillment and outcomes were rarely moderated by work status, suggesting that part-time employees will respond in a similar way as full-time employees to adjustments in their psychological contract.     

Teaching by Convincing: Strategies of Argumentation in Lectures

The aim of this article is to show the argumentative component in the discourse of teachers. This is done on the basis of an analysis of the argumentative strategies used by teachers during the first class of a university course in order to increase their discourse efficiency. The analysis of the corpus studied shows that in such a session teachers use argumentative strategies in order to control the social distance which separates them from students. In doing so, they make a double movement, one of distancing and one of approximation, with the aim of achieving a balance which permits them to consolidate their authority in the eyes of the students and, at the same time, present an accessible and well-disposed image to them.     

Using Toulmin's Framework for the Analysis of Everyday Argumentation: Some Methodological Considerations

This study used Toulmin's analytical framework of argumentative structure in order to examine employees' argumentative discourse on the way they handle conflict situations in their workplace. The way in which this analytical tool has been applied here challenges critics on the usefulness of the particular analytical tool for the analysis of real-life argumentation. The definition of argumentative elements according to their function in the context of a particular argument, together with the analysis beyond the level of what has been stated explicitly enabled a comprehensive understanding of how specific information, statements or assumptions are interpreted and utilized in arguments examined. Finally, the acknowledgment of the importance of `field-dependency' of argumentative discourse, through the consideration of the social context within which this discourse is embedded, elicited the way in which this context made employees' argumentation a meaningful and acceptable discourse in this particular setting.     

Reasoning Is for Arguing: Understanding the Successes and Failures of Deliberation

Theoreticians of deliberative democracy have sometimes found it hard to relate to the seemingly contradictory experimental results produced by psychologists and political scientists. We suggest that this problem may be alleviated by inserting a layer of psychological theory between the empirical results and the normative political theory. In particular, we expose the argumentative theory of reasoning that makes the observed pattern of findings more coherent. According to this theory, individual reasoning mechanisms work best when used to produce and evaluate arguments during a public deliberation. It predicts that when diverse opinions are discussed, group reasoning will outperform individual reasoning. It also predicts that individuals have a strong confirmation bias. When people reason either alone or with like‐minded peers, this confirmation bias leads them to reinforce their initial attitudes, explaining individual and group polarization. We suggest that the failures of reasoning are most likely to be remedied at the collective than at the individual level.     

Problem-Solving Argumentative Patterns in Plenary Debates of the European Parliament

The aim of this paper is to describe the way in which argumentative patterns come into being in plenary debate over legislative issues in the European Parliament. What kind of argumentative patterns are to be expected within this macro context? It is shown that the argumentative patterns that come into being in legislative debate in the European Parliament depend for the most part on the problem-solving argumentation that is put forward in the opening speech by the rapporteur of the parliamentary committee report. This argumentation can be pragmatic problem-solving argumentation or complex problem-solving argumentation. The most important prototypical argumentative patterns are investigated in the argumentation put forward by the Members of parliament. This investigation is based on an inventory of the arguments that can in principle be used to support or attack the initial problem-solving argumentation put forward by the rapporteur.     

The metaphor police: A case study of the role of metaphor in explanation

While many scholars have pointed to the role of metaphor in explanation, relatively little experimental research has examined whether and how metaphors are used and understood in everyday explanatory discourse. Across 3 experiments, we investigated the nature and function of metaphor in explanation by drawing on a real-world example where the terms guardian and warrior were used to metaphorically explain the role of police officers. We found, first, that the associations participants brought to mind for these concepts differed depending on whether they had previously answered questions about law enforcement (e.g., associations for warrior emphasized aggression and violence rather than strength and bravery when participants had previously answered questions about policing). Second, people were almost evenly split in their judgment of which metaphor was more appropriate to explain the role of law enforcement; this preference was highly predictive of beliefs related to policing and the criminal justice system. Third, and most important, using these metaphors to explain the job of policing causally influenced attitudes toward law enforcement in a metaphor-congruent manner (i.e., exposure to the guardian metaphor led to more positive attitudes), a finding that could not be accounted for by basic lexical priming. These studies complement existing work that has identified metaphor as a mechanism for representing abstract concepts, but also highlight the communicative and explanatory, rather than representational, functions of metaphor by showing that metaphors can encapsulate and convey an array of structured attitudes and beliefs.     

Scientists’ Argumentative Reasoning

Reasoning, defined as the production and evaluation of reasons, is a central process in science. The dominant view of reasoning, both in the psychology of reasoning and in the psychology of science, is of a mechanism with an asocial function: bettering the beliefs of the lone reasoner. Many observations, however, are difficult to reconcile with this view of reasoning; in particular, reasoning systematically searches for reasons that support the reasoner’s initial beliefs, and it only evaluates these reasons cursorily. By contrast, reasoners are well able to evaluate others’ reasons: accepting strong arguments and rejecting weak ones. The argumentative theory of reasoning accounts for these traits of reasoning by postulating that the evolved function of reasoning is to argue: to find arguments to convince others and to change one’s mind when confronted with good arguments. Scientific reasoning, however, is often described as being at odds with such an argumentative mechanisms: scientists are supposed to reason objectively on their own, and to be pigheaded when their theories are challenged, even by good arguments. In this article, we review evidence showing that scientists, when reasoning, are subject to the same biases as are lay people while being able to change their mind when confronted with good arguments. We conclude that the argumentative theory of reasoning explains well key features of scientists’ reasoning and that differences in the way scientists and laypeople reason result from the institutional framework of science.     

Sex differences in levels of tolerance and attribution of blame for sexual harassment on a university campus

Although the issue of sexual harassment on college campuses has been discussed in the literature for the last five years, little attention has been paid to sex differences in levels of tolerance and attribution of blame in harassment. The current survey, based on a random sample of faculty, students, and staff at a large southern university, details sex differences in definitions of harassment, in attitudes toward causes, in attitudes toward romantic relationships between faculty and students, and in attitudes toward university policy. The authors suggest that sex differences reflect differing perceptions by men and women of their own self-interests within the university, and the organizational environment. Attention is also directed to the explanatory power of attribution theory.     

Contractualism as Restricted Constructivism

Metaethics is often dominated by both realist views according to which moral claims are made true by either non-natural or natural properties and by non-cognitivist views according to which these claims express desire-like attitudes. It is sometimes suggested that constructivism is a fourth alternative, but it has remained opaque just how it differs from the other views. To solve this problem, this article first describes a clear constructivist theory based on Crispin Wright’s anti-realism. It then outlines an argumentative strategy that can be used to argue against constructivist views about practical reasons. The rest of the article explains how the outlined constructivist metaethical framework, reasons, and contractualism in normative ethics can still be used to create a new viable metaethical constructivist position about right and wrong.