Importance Of Intuition

Analysis Mercier and Sperber first state that inferences, rather than reason, serve as the foundation for cognition. They present illusions and mind tricks to illustrate natural faults in cognition, which would not occur if we could accurately reason. They then state that humans “can spend hours or even days without ever engaging in reason,” since we primarily rely on quick inferences (Location 963). They define intuition as “using the same kind of process as perception, and producing the same kind of content as reasoning,” but as much quicker than the slow, deliberate process of reasoning (Location 1158). Since intuition processes information quickly, as perception does, intuition fulfils its role much quicker than reasoning does.

These inferences

We also use reason to evaluate not so much our own thought as the reasons others produce to justify themselves or to convince us” (Location 177). Reason, it claims, starts “from an intuitive bias or hunch… and [looks] for reasons in its favor through backward inference,” essentially forming reasons for which you can infer something after inferring it (Location 2994). Mercier and Sperber then draw inspiration from Cosmides’s theory of the evolution of reasoning. Cosmides claimed that reasoning evolved to confront conflicts in cooperations -- mainly, in identifying free riders in the group and excluding them (Location 3173). However, Cosmides also claimed that since reasoning is so broad, it could not possibly exist (Location 3185). The authors reject this classical definition of reasoning, which classifies reasoning as a generalist, in support of the existence of a reasoning module that uses various metarepresentations. However, they keep Cosmides’s argument about the evolution of reasoning in response to social conflicts and expand upon it. They claim that we provide others with reasons in order to justify our actions so that we may build trust and credibility within a