General Humans argue to win, not to seek truth

The Helper

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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.

“Reasoning doesn’t have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions,” said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. “It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.” Truth and accuracy were beside the point.

 
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Wummi

Just Relax and Smile!
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That just shows we are very LOGICAL and CIVILIZED living beings!
 

Sevion

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What are you talking about? I never argue to win. Though I win every argument.
 

tom_mai78101

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I lost a verbal battle with my classmate when proving how good Japan is compared to other countries, now I feel this is true. He does have more knowledge than me about the country.
 

MasterOfRa

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Well duh... Why would we need to research this? What we need to do is research how to Get people to work together, not why they cannot... XD
 

Accname

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i think you have to be a little dumb to become a researcher, i known this for ages now.
they should better spent their time and money to build some lazorz to fend off aliens which will come eventually.
 

uberfoop

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I think that anyone who thought that the sole purpose of reasoning was to explore understanding clearly has not been paying much attention in life. I think that exploring understanding is certainly a valid use of reasoning that does exist, but human beings definitely mostly just do it to avoid the agony of defeat, and strive for the satisfaction of glorious victory!

Recall the "Someone is wrong on the internet." xkcd. We're addicted to trying to win arguments; otherwise we could just go to bed and deal with it later.
 

UndeadDragon

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I think that fully intellectual arguments are done by people who have good knowledge in the field that they are arguing, therefore they would not be arguing to learn from each other, only to win the argument.
 

Romek

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I read about this exact thing two years ago in a book about psychology.
 
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