Reasoning and Rationality from the Viewpoint of Evolutionary Psychology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48160/18532330me2.64Keywords:
rationality, reasoning, evolutionary psychology, modularityAbstract
Evolutionary psychology claims that the human mind is formed by modules which are product of natural selection. Different modules have been postulated, one of them is thought to have been designed to detect cheaters in social intercourses. With this module and some others, evolutionary psychologists consider that we do not have to worry about the pessimistic interpretation of human rationality. The purposes of this article are: i) to explore the results in relation to rationality, if we would accept the theses defended by evolutionary psychologists, and ii) to evaluate if those results can be used to reject the pessimistic interpretation of rationality. I shall argue that evolutionary psychology can be used to refuse just one version of the pessimistic interpretation of rationality, but there is another version of that interpretation that can be compatible with and even explained by this psychological approach.
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