There is a general consensus that there is a division of linguistic labour and that it is important in explaining the expressive power of human language our ability to talk about phenomena beyond the reach of our own experience. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. According to the account, confirmation bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. I argue that Tomasello’s account may go too far in the collectivist tradition and I conclude that a more plausible naturalistic account of the sociality of human reasoning would likely recognize a mix of different social contexts and functions of reasoning.Ĭonfirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Finally, I consider a different naturalistic account of the social nature of reasoning due to Michael Tomasello, who submits that reasoning evolved primarily for cooperative argumentation and joint or collective decision-making. At the same time, I show that “naturalized” inferentialists could find congenial much of what Mercier and Sperber have to say about the social origins and functions of reasoning. I argue that although Mercier-Sperber’s naturalistic hypothesis is promising, their account of how reasoning works faces a number of philosophical objections that inferentialism has the resources to overcome. In this chapter I compare the inferentialist account of reasoning with the approach of Mercier and Sperber. They argue that reasoning evolved originally and primarily for the purposes of social justification and argumentation. A rather similar idea has recently been elaborated from the naturalistic perspective by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. One of the main tenets of inferentialism is that reasoning is primarily a competence to play the social game of giving and asking for reasons.
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