TCT 015: Confirmation Bias and the Evolution of Reason




The Critical Thinker Academy show

Summary: In this episode I talk about a new approach to understanding confirmation bias that is getting some recent attention. It's known as the "argumentative theory of reason", and it claims that our ability to construct and evaluate arguments evolved in ancestral humans primarily for the sake of social persuasion and social collaboration, rather than for improving the quality of individual beliefs and decisions. In this episode I survey the theory and some of its implications for understanding who we are as critical thinkers. This episode covers quite a bit of ground, from evolutionary psychology to collaborative reasoning to biological functions and the Greek story of Odysseus and the Sirens!