Bøger af Hugo Mercier

¿Brilliant¿Timely and necessary.¿ ¿Financial Times¿Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.¿ ¿Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn¿t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs.¿Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant¿Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?¿Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems¿[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.¿ ¿Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker ¿Turns reason¿s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.¿ ¿Financial Times¿The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.¿¿Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017'Original and provocative ... likely to have a big impact on our understanding of ourselves' Steven Pinker'Mercier and Sperber offer a surprising and powerful response to the new orthodoxy propounded by Kahneman and Tversky ... arguing that the supposed flaws of hot, fast, automatic thinking are actually design features which work remarkably well' Julian BagginiReason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. But, if reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If it is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense?In their ground-breaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma, taking us on a journey from desert ants to modern scientists, and from Aristotle to Daniel Kahneman. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that they address to us.In other words, reason has evolved to help humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This illuminating interpretation of reason makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists - why reason is biased in favour of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones. Ambitious, provocative, and entertaining, The Enigma of Reason will spark debate among psychologists and philosophers, and make many reasonable people rethink their own thinking.