Mindscape 233 | Hugo Mercier on Reasoning and Skepticism
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- Опубліковано 16 кві 2023
- Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Here at the Mindscape Podcast, we are firmly pro-reason. But what does that mean, fundamentally and in practice? How did humanity come into the idea of not just doing things, but doing things for reasons? In this episode we talk with cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier about these issues. He is the co-author (with Dan Sperber) of The Enigma of Reason, about how the notion of reason came to be, and more recently author of Not Born Yesterday, about who we trust and what we believe. He argues that our main shortcoming is not being insufficiently skeptical of radical claims, but of being too skeptical of claims that don't fit our views.
Hugo Mercier received a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is currently a Permanent CNRS Research Scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. Among his awards are the Prime d’excellence from the CNRS.
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#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture - Наука та технологія
if you're in a doomsday cult & the world doesn't end it's not the end of the world
I see what you did there 🤜🤛
😉👍
I also heard that and puffed air out my nose
Thank you, it was a pleasure to have another opportunity to benefit from a stupendous conversation. 🙏✨
The Life of Reason - George Santayana...for anyone who was truly pulled by this talk, it's a great book by an even greater philosopher!
These podcasts and AMAs are informative, empirical, and inferential. I try to listen to them all twice if feasible.
I was listening to this while half asleep and dreaming. In my dream I was present during your dialog. I keep trying to interject and make some observations of my own but you guys kept ignoring me as if I was not there. It was quite frustrating. Then I woke up enough to realize that I was listening to a podcast. Lol.
Undersubscribed comment 👍🏽
Those who are prone to _Lucid Dreaming_ can often do this, and sometimes deeply partake in a fascinating discussion based on the topic in the audio being played while dreaming. It's best to queue up a dialog that is slower-paced if you wish to "enter the discussion" in your dream. Try listening to some of the numerous archives of Alan Watts, or use podcasts of Theo Von when he has no guest on, when he just talks on his own. If you're into _Nightmare Therapy_ or if you like to experience lucid dreams that are sometimes helpful in dealing with trauma, a very low dose of _Baclofen_ can invoke these, and the experience can be extremely intense, therapeutic, but potentially terrifying for some people. - j q t -
The government thing that it really influences the extremists/conspiracionists makes total sense, and as a Brazilian, our previous president was a conspiracionist himself, and that increased A LOT the aggressiveness and the amount of conspiracionists and extremists here.
And the social media thing is relevant here as well, it has been proven that the previous government had a team of people responsible of creating and spreading fake news over social media. Which as well gave spark to the creation of organized extremist groups.
“Animals can’t reason” is analogous to the sour grapes fable. “We can’t seem to figure out how to communicate with animals, so they must not be able to reason.” it seems to me that having reasons actually enables one to solve problems with less thinking. For instance, “We follows these rules because they please God, and our religion tells us what pleases God, so we don’t need to think about whether eating shrimp is okay.” It follows that reason may be an evolutionary strategy for animals with smaller brains and/or fewer energy resources, rather than reason being some function that emerges from higher intelligence.
The suggested social origin of reasoning is a circular argument. Persuading one early hominid gal of having to do something by giving a reason could only work if she already had the ability of thinking in terms of reasons. The evolution of reasoning relied on developing conditional predictive models and some model of self representation that places the individual as a causative agent. This is of decisive importance for the survival of non-social as well as social animals. Figuring out how to construct a trap to catch an animal requires the ability of reasoning the utility of which is completely independent of acting alone or in cooperating groups.
I think youve missed his whole point, perhaps listen to the first 20mins again. The "reasoning" you are talking about (laying the trap) is not the "reasoning" he defines. To Hugo this distinction is key. Having said that I agree, social evolution is a circular argument and why its so complex, how does language evolve, one person cannot just start talking!
@@deloford point taken
All these interviews are just Sean's way of trying to convince himself bigfoot doesn't exist
At 30:14 to 30:45, I would've asked Hugo : Define truth?
Unexplainable
As far as I understand the brain is not a mechanism maybe I do not understand correctly it's a mechanical?
Hugo,
With respect to the pointing example with goats and chimpanzees, I suspect the goats where from a long line of domestication whereas not-so for the chimpanzees. If we had ever domesticated chimps, do you think they would understand pointing. Or, if the experiment was done over a large number of domesticated and non-domesticated creatures would the results correlate?
Thanks,
Charlie
Ofcourse, famously dogs also understand pointing. It is precisely Hugo's point that because the animal has evolved through domestication that they are able to understand "pointing".
How do we actually implement bayesian reasoning in government and society? AI going to kick our buts at everything.
Not first
. . . not first . . . not last . . . not even remotely close to being in the middle . . . - j q t -
_My mother, she's a 'Taylor' . . . She sewed my new blue jeans_ 🎶 🎵 👖
_My father was a gambling man . . . Down in New Orleans_ 🎼 💰 🎲 🌞 "House of the Rising Sun"
_"Cognitive Dissonance is a QAnon, science-denying, anti-vaxxer finding more supporting 'evidence' on a hand-held invention that contains over ten billion transistors."_ - j q t -
Dear Hugo, the explanation you offer on why only humans possess reason is a circular one. You ask: if reason is so good (I guess you imply goodness in terms of a fitness function), then why only humans have it? And then you explain: because we, humans, are so good in communication and reason is so handy to facilitate communication. But then may I ask: if communication is so good, why only we have such great communication capabilities? Do you see what I mean? Your argument is "it's turtles all the way down".
No, Hugo literally says he doesn't think there's an infinite regress of reasons, so he's not saying "it's turtles all the way down". He appears to think there is some aspect to our ability to reason (not reasoning - he makes this distinction) that is instrinsic to what it means to be human.
@@roger5442 Sorry @Roger, but he says exactly what I said. He says if reason is so good, why only we have it? Then he says that we are surpassing other species in communication and reason is really important for communication. So, let me ask you: if communication is so good (evolutionary) why only we have it? Let's make an analogy. Vision is very important and different species have radically different constructions of an eye (meaning that evolution has "invented" (metaphorically) vision organs multiple times), but it's not like only one species has this advantage. If -- according to the theory-- there is an evolutionary advantage in vision, many species will have it and they indeed do. It's overwhelmingly present. If communication is so good, why was it "invented by evolution" only once? I think this clarifies my comment. So, now you have two things that you need to explain, not one. Reason is standing on the "turtle" of communication. What is "communication" standing on? Another "turtle"? :)
@@MrDavidbr1970 I didn't say you misquoted him. I am saying that I think your critique isn't relevant to Hugo's views because he's ruled out an infinite regress. That is: he's going to agree with you that it isn't going be "turtles all the way down."
So I think that if you accept Hugo's explanation that 'reason' is a feature of a creature's ability for 'superior' communication (because most animals do communicate eg: birds, lions, dogs etc) then that seems sufficient to me.
But if you want to ask "well, why are humans the only species to be able to communicate to such a level?" then that's (to me at least) a different question; one regarding 'communication' and not specifically about 'reason'.
@@roger5442 I have to admit this is not what I understood from this talk. Maybe I need to listen to it again. However, the problem with your interpretation is that you omit the evolutionary explanation that I think was pretty explicit in his lecture and simply postulate that a being of supreme communication abilities has to have reason. And since we are such beings we have to have reason and, voila, we indeed have it. Well, at least some of us) But this is not an explanation because it would be explaining a phenomenon by the very phenomenon you need to explain. It is a postulate, not an explation. Well, if your interpretation is correct, then it is not infinite regress, I give you that, but it is not an explanation either. It opens a worm can of questions. For example, is there a threshold of communication skills level after which reason evolves? How do these skills evolve to this level without reason in the first place, because to have reason you need to have language and the whole cognitive apparatus associated with it. But how can you have it if you are not at this level of communication? Or should we take this as "reason might happen" if you are supreme in communication, not does not necessarily happen? Why are we so obviously alone at this level and communication skills and therefore reason? If you say: because we are supreme in communication it will make a full circle.
@@MrDavidbr1970 Tbf I wasn't trying to give a detailed account of his views anyway, but certainly I omitted a lot. I think if a person accepts evolution then Hugo's hypothesis appears plausible to me. I'm going to omit a lot again - but it's simply the way humans have evolved.
*"And since we are such beings we have to have reason and, voila, we indeed have it. Well, at least some of us)"*
I wonder if we are getting wires crossed. I don't think Hugo is talking about human's ability to use 'reason' as in 'reasoning' like making inferences eg: p implies q etc. Granted - not all of us are great at applying this kind of 'reason.' Rather I think Hugo is talking about humans giving 'reason(s)' as in *why something is the case. eg: Maybe your daughter comes home late after school and you want to know *why (the reason) she is late. And maybe she'll give you some reason (truly or falsely) eg: went to her friend's house (or whatever). ie: 'reason' isn't something we "have" - it's something we *tell other people/ourself.
*"But this is not an explanation because it would be explaining a phenomenon by the very phenomenon you need to explain."*
I guess I don't see how. Hugo seems to to be saying the phenomenon (telling reasons) is explained by a theory (evolution). So how is this a case where the phenomenon (telling reasons) is explained by the very phenomenon (telling reasons)? But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point here.
*"Why are we so obviously alone at this level and communication skills and therefore reason? If you say: because we are supreme in communication it will make a full circle."*
I would say that I think it's because no other creature evolved this way. ie: it's plausible other species could have, but simply never did. It's the same as why we see variations - not all great apes look the same. One could ask the same question of a gorilla: why is the gorilla so obviously alone at this level of looking gorilla-like? Well - nothing else evolved to be gorilla-like.
He lost me when he was taking shots at vax hesitancy in the most clownish blue-pilled way. I did like his advice to governments though, people would trust the government more if they stopped lying about everything.