Human reason not to discover truth, but as a social tool? - We have an inner lawyer instead of an inner scientist. It's about defending our position, and we rally others to support us (thus, it's a social tool) - https://iai.tv/articles/language-vs-reality-auid-2171 - In their 2017 book, The Enigma of Reason, cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that this doesn’t mean human rationality is poorly adapted to its purpose. That conclusion would follow only if the evolved purpose of reason were to arrive at objective truth. Instead, Mercier and Sperber argue that reason evolved for another purpose. Human reason is the way it is—“flawed” if seen as a tool for classical logic in the privacy of your mind—because it is actually a social tool. Reason evolved for convincing and persuading other people, winning arguments with other people, defending and justifying actions and decisions to other people. These functions may be achieved regardless of whether the content of a proposition is true. I can benefit from convincing someone of something even when that thing is false. (This of course does not entail that it’s good to convince people of false things!) - It is often said that human reasoning is not as balanced or dispassionate as we would like to think it is, that our inner scientist is in fact an inner lawyer. (With apologies to members of those two important professions, I am using the terms “scientist” and “lawyer” as caricatures for two different ways of thinking about what language is good for.) The scientist seeks to know the truth, while the lawyer seeks to persuade. And in persuading, the lawyer seeks not to get at the truth but to get her way (or to get the way of those who pay her fee). She seeks not to explain but to defend. And notice that while the scientist may sometimes work alone, the lawyer’s job is a necessarily social one, and language is her primary tool.