Culture | June 15, 2011 | 3 comments

Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth - People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html

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Vierotchka
For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.

Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth.

The idea, labeled the argumentative theory of reasoning, is the brainchild of French cognitive social scientists, and it has stirred excited discussion (and appalled dissent) among philosophers, political scientists, educators and psychologists, some of whom say it offers profound insight into the way people think and behave. The Journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted its April issue to debates over the theory, with participants challenging everything from the definition of reason to the origins of verbal communication.

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  1. groups:
    Culture,   Current Cultural Issues
  2. tags:
    Psychology,  Logic,  Reason,  Discussion,  6 more
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3 comments // Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth - People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert

  • artemis6
  • CaptSutter
    • +1
      CaptSutter  

    • If you see life as a board game then such a theory is pretty descriptive, and I have seen people who do argue this way, and they tend to win, what ever that means.

      If you don't use argument as a path to truth, it will lead you to destruction. keeping your attention off of the real prize or the real danger. If you are not willing to be convinced then what is the point..

      This article may be descriptive of human nature but as a strategy it dooms not only those who practice argument to win but also those who practice argument to find truth, and that leads us back to America in the 21st century. Those who argue only to win will be the death of us all...

      Maybe it is time to read Gore's analysis of lizard-brain and rational-brain again as an antidote to the lizard-brain debate team.

    • 12 months ago
  • Vierotchka
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