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Scientists’ Argumentative Reasoning

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Barnes et al. (1996) have done much arguing against this presupposition, which favors a normative analysis of scientific knowledge production and prevent a naturalistic one. These authors also often accuse their detractors of making this assumption. For instance, Bloor (1997) answering Cole (1995). Note also that, in the same article, Bloor looks at the psychological origin of biases and the social dynamic that leads to cancelling out individual biases: a point elaborated within the argumentative theory of reasoning (Sperber and Mercier 2012).

  2. This points reflects the more general debate in sociology between social determination and rational agency. The role of reasoning is made very explicit in Boudon (1995).

  3. “In order to reach that aim [developing a naturalistic anthropology of science], we have to abandon many intermediary beliefs: belief in […] the power of reason” (Latour 1993: p. 150). In the context of the ‘science war,’ where scientists opposed some theories of science and conceptual methods in social studies of science, Latour points out what he takes to be the misguided assumptions of his contradictors: “I quickly unearthed what appeared to me to be a fundamental presupposition of those who reject “social” explanations of science. This is the assumption that force is different in kind to reason; right can never be reduce to reason” (p. 153). By contrast, we stick with the old fashioned idea that there is a difference between being constrained by physical force and being convinced by the force of an argument. The latter, however, can also be studied in a naturalistic way with cognitive science.

  4. We prefer to use “myside bias” rather than the more commonly used “confirmation bias” because reasoning does not have a bias to confirm everything, but rather to find reasons that support the reasoner’s side.

  5. The 2–4–6 does not provide a straightforward demonstration of the myside bias, but it can still be interpreted as strongly suggesting its presence (see, Klayman and Ha 1987; Mercier and Sperber 2011a).

  6. Regarding the possibility of anticipating counter-arguments, the view developed here is somewhat more optimistic than that exposed in Mercier and Sperber (2011a, b).

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Correspondence to Hugo Mercier.

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Mercier, H., Heintz, C. Scientists’ Argumentative Reasoning. Topoi 33, 513–524 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9217-4

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