Why a modular approach to reason?

Mind and Language 33 (5):533-541 (2018)
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Abstract

In their reviews, Chater and Oaksford, Dutilh Novaes, and Sterelny are critical of our modularist approach to reason. In this response, we clarify our claim that reason is one of many cognitive modules that produce intuitive inferences each in its domain; the reason module producing intuitions about reasons. We argue that in‐principle objections to the idea of massive modularity based on Fodor's peculiar approach are not effective against other interpretations that have led to insightful uses of the notion in psychology and biology. We explain how the reason module evaluates reasons on the basis of their metacognitive properties. We show how the module fulfils a social function, that of producing reasons to justify oneself and convince others and of evaluating the reasons others produce to convince us.

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Author Profiles

Hugo Mercier
Institut Jean Nicod
Dan Sperber
Institut Jean Nicod

Citations of this work

Collectivized Intellectualism.Julia Jael Smith & Benjamin Wald - 2019 - Res Philosophica 96 (2):199-227.
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Science as a moral system.Stefaan Blancke - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-18.
Belief Attribution as Indirect Communication.Christopher Gauker - 2020 - In Ladislav Koreň, Hans Bernhard Schmid, Preston Stovall & Leo Townsend, Groups, Norms and Practices: Essays on Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality. Cham: Springer. pp. 173-187.
Modular vs. diagrammatic reasoning.Angelina Bobrova & Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen - 2022 - Pragmatics and Cognition 29 (1):111-134.

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References found in this work

The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture.Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby - 1992 - Oxford University Press. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby.
The Modularity of Mind.Robert Cummins & Jerry Fodor - 1983 - Philosophical Review 94 (1):101.
Relevance.D. Sperber & Deirdre Wilson - 1986 - Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 2.

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