There are many reasons to read Nietzsche. Whether you agree with his substantive views, taking him seriously will help to keep you intellectually honest. An example comes from Beyond Good and Evil, Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers, §5:

What provokes one to look at all philosophers half suspiciously, half mockingly, is not that one discovers again and again how innocent they are – how often and how easily they make mistakes and go astray; in short, their childishness and childlikeness – but that they are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic (as opposed to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and doltish – and talk of “inspiration”); while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of “inspiration” – most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract – that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact. They are all advocates who resent that name, and for the most part even wily spokesmen for their prejudices which they baptize “truths” – and very far from having the courage of the conscience that admits this, precisely this, to itself; very far from having the good taste of the courage which also lets this be known, whether to warn an enemy or friend, or, from exuberance, to mock itself.

 

According to an interesting website authored by Hugo Mercier, “Current philosophy and psychology are dominated by what can be called a classical, or ‘Cartesian’ view of reasoning. Even though this view goes back at least to some classical Greek philosophers, its most famous exposition is probably in Descartes.” This essay is Part I in a critical assessment of Mercier’s claims as outlined on the above website. Mercier contrasts the Cartesian view discussed with a dialogical view of reasoning that is supposed to fit best with empirical evidence and our evolutionary heritage. I will address it in more detail in Part II. All quotes below are from Mercier’s website. I question some of the claims as I quote them. Those objections are in brackets. I then go into a more detailed and general critique of the claims.

Classical, Cartesian View of Reasoning

1. “The role of reasoning is to critically examine our beliefs so as to discard wrong-headed ones and thus create more reliable beliefs—knowledge.”

2. “This knowledge is in turn supposed to help us make better decisions.”

We should note the difference in these two claims. One is about knowledge acquisition and the other is about using that knowledge to make better decisions. I’ll return to this point later.

Against the Cartesian view of reasoning: “This view is hard to reconcile with a wealth of evidence amassed by modern psychology.” Let’s look at the supposed upshot of that evidence.

The Use of Reason in Decision Making Often Leads to Failures

3. “Johnson-Laird and Evans (and, again, many others) have shown how fallible reasoning can be.”

[Descartes was seemingly obsessed with certainty, but that aside it’s not clear how demonstrating the fallibility of reason in itself calls into question its usefulness, unless, of course, the fallibility rate were high. Without the data, we can’t say.]

4. “Others have shown that sometimes reasoning too much can make us worse off: it can unduly increase self-confidence, allow us to maintain erroneous beliefs, create distorted, polarized beliefs and enable us to violate our own moral intuitions by finding handy excuses.”

[Again, without the data on hand it is hard to directly counter these claims. However, the “sometimes reasoning too much” is rather suspicious. First, “sometimes” can means anywhere from “once” to “occasionally,” to “pretty often”; further, the “reasoning too much” implies only that reasoning TOO much can lead to problems, not that reasoning as such does. Moreover, what is the data on doing the opposite, i.e., not reasoning enough? What does that lead to? Does it not also “unduly increase self-confidence, allow us to maintain erroneous beliefs, create distorted, polarized beliefs and enable us to violate our own moral intuitions by finding handy excuses”?]

While there are certainly limits to Cartesian reasoning, the basic complaints from Mercier, et al., can be questioned on the following grounds. We can distinguish two general types of reasoning, as Aristotle does: theoretical reasoning and practical reasoning. An example of the former would be thinking about whether the mind is identical to the brain; an example of the latter would be thinking about whether to take a job. The two are not, of course, unrelated. If I were to come to the conclusion that the mind must be something like a soul, then that might influence a decision to start going to a church, synagogue, etc.

Given this distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning, and how they’re related, one thing that is puzzling about the claim that “Cartesian” reasoning often leads to failure in decision making is: what are the criteria being used to assess the purported failures?

Think of the example above that combines the theoretical with the practical. How do you assess the success or failure of concluding there must be a soul and then deciding to go to a church? On the theoretical side, presumably one would do so through further reasoning about the mind-body issues. Such reasoning may very well include taking into account empirical studies. On the practical side, presumably one would do so by assessing one’s satisfaction with the church, its people, sermons, etc. The practical side may be more straightforward than the theoretical side, but the point to take away is that apparent successes and failures of Cartesian reasoning are not going to be black or white. So it is suspect, to say the least, to claim that Cartesian reasoning often leads to failures.

But perhaps all that is meant by saying that it often leads to failures is that when studied empirically, what is found is that people who engage in Cartesian reasoning prior to making a decision often give a subsequent self-assessment of failure in regard to the decision. Assuming such studies were performed properly, it leads immediately to the question of what weight we should give such self-assessments. It reminds me of an issue in debates about happiness and well-being: can one be happy or live well even when one doesn’t think one is? Are people really the best judges of their condition? This is a difficult issue, but there is reason to question such self-authority.

Lastly, returning to the original two claims that are supposed to characterize the Classical, Cartesian view of reasoning,

1. “The role of reasoning is to critically examine our beliefs so as to discard wrong-headed ones and thus create more reliable beliefs—knowledge.”

2. “This knowledge is in turn supposed to help us make better decisions.”

I noted above that there is an important difference between them. The first is about knowledge acquisition and the second is about using that knowledge to make better decisions. Socrates seems to have thought that virtue is a matter of having proper knowledge of what is best, for if you know what is best, then you’ll do it. The problem that such a view runs into, of course, is akrasia (weakness of will): We might acquire knowledge of what is best but still make poor decisions. I might know that eating oatmeal is better than the dozen donuts, but still might choose the donuts. But is akrasia really the fault of reason? And moreover, is it really a part of the Cartesian view to ignore such complications as akrasia? It seems to me that the answer is “No” to both questions. Insofar as we might fail to make good decisions based on what we know, it is not the fault of that knowledge or our reasoning. Further, it is a mistake to claim that it is a part of “Cartesian” reasoning to expect reason and knowledge to be so successful.

But perhaps the point is something else. Perhaps Mercier’s point regarding 2 is that when we acquire “knowledge” from Cartesian reasoning processes and then decide in accordance with that knowledge, then it turns out that we don’t actually make better decisions; in fact, they often lead to failures. If that is Mercier’s point, then I refer back to the objections made above to such purported failures.

To be continued….