Hugo Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod, dives deep into the evolutionary roots of reasoning and its role in enhancing social interactions. He challenges traditional views by emphasizing reasoning's social function and its impact on collective intelligence. The discussion touches on biases in reasoning, the challenges in developing artificial general intelligence, and the importance of epistemic vigilance in today's misinformation landscape. Mercier also explores how expertise influences reasoning and the need for diverse viewpoints to enrich our understanding.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Finding Your Research Niche
Find a research area that aligns with your broader interests.
Working with someone whose work you admire can provide valuable guidance and opportunities.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Sperber's Comprehensive Framework
Hugo Mercier was drawn to Dan Sperber's comprehensive framework for understanding the human mind.
Sperber's work offers a coherent view of mind, language, culture, and cognition.
insights INSIGHT
Reasoning's Social Function
Reasoning's function is social, for arguing and justifying views, rather than individual mistake correction.
This argumentative theory challenges the view of reasoning as a tool for improving individual judgments.
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The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis chronicles the intellectual and personal relationship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Israeli psychologists whose research fundamentally changed our understanding of human decision-making. Their studies, conducted from the late 1960s to the 1980s, exposed systematic errors in human judgment under uncertainty and laid the foundation for behavioral economics. The book delves into their extraordinary lives, including their careers in the Israeli military, and how their personal differences and eventual estrangement affected their work. Lewis's narrative makes complex psychological concepts accessible through engaging storytelling, highlighting the profound impact of Kahneman and Tversky's work on various fields, including economics, medicine, and government regulation[3][4][5].
The Enigma of Reason
A New Theory of Human Understanding
Dan Sperber
Hugo Mercier
In 'The Enigma of Reason', Mercier and Sperber argue that human reason did not evolve to enable individuals to solve abstract logical problems or make better decisions on their own. Instead, they propose that reason is primarily a social competence, developed to justify thoughts and actions to others, produce arguments to convince others, and evaluate the reasons given by others. This theory explains why reason is both a unique cognitive capacity of humans and why it often leads to biased and lazy reasoning. The book emphasizes that reason's main utility lies in facilitating cooperation and communication within complex social groups, making it an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have built for themselves[1][2][3].
Not born yesterday
United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee on Aging.
Humans reason about many matters: from the most simple of concerns, like the planning of a weekend outing; to the most complex and intellectual topics. Given the ubiquity of reasoning, and the broad range of situations which call for it, we tend to take it for granted. But for these very same reasons, the study of reasoning is quite central to understanding the workings of the human mind. One can wonder how we came to acquire such a capacity, how our minds are so wired to make inferences, the places where reasoning breaks down, and so much more.
On this first ever episode of the Cognitations Podcast, Hugo Mercier tells us how we can answer these questions. Hugo Mercier, is a cognitive scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS). His work has primarily focused on the function and workings of reasoning. Other research themes that he engages with are collective intelligence, the evaluation of communicated information, trust in science and interest in science. He is the author of two books: The Enigma of Reason (co-authored with Dan Sperber) & Not Born Yesterday in 2020.
Cognitations 
