The book has a very interesting premise, that reason exists (in fact evolved) for self-justification and the authors say they intend to validate this. Further, they argue that Reason is an inbuilt human module. For me they failed to properly describe their case, much less prove it.
I agree that reason can be used for self-justification, and in fact it is hard to use it otherwise. Many thinkers, and lately psychologists, have demonstrated this. Methods of testing interior thought were developed over centuries to counter this self-justification. As we know, even in much of science, self-justification is still massively present.
I argue that science and the progress it enabled are also operated by the "module" the authors call Reason (no problem here, many capabilities are used beyond their evolutionary value), and that humans and many animals employ a built-in system to create and maintain social rules. To me this sounds like reason, in a couple of its many meanings. At least if I were looking for a module that went beyond self-justification I might start by postulating a social rules system.
I found the first part of the book challengingly readable. The authors carefully explain that some words they will use (such as reason and intuition) are defined in a different ways in regular conversation, in psychology, and in philosophy (and reason is defined again, in a very different way, in logic). These clarifications were very useful. Then the authors use each word in more than one of its definitions in the same paragraph, with no signaling of which Reason they mean.
After awhile the "formal logic speak" takes over and we have repeated repetitions of Mary and her research paper mixed with stories from psychological experiments. I would recommend reading only as much as you can tolerate of this section and then skipping ahead to the what the authors are trying to affirm. There are useful tidbits here, but for me the thoughts were jumbled and did not build a good base for the premise. I see that some reviewers praise the book, possibly because they were in tune enough with these fields to follow the argument. Even the authors seem to lose attention. In the umpteenth rendition of why Mary did not study at the library (the paper is due the next day, but the library was closed), the roommates offer her a glass of wine. I suppose even the authors forgot about the Mary's paper.
The opening paragraph in section III, Rethinking Reason, states the author's premise in a very clear way: as a way to come to conclusions about ourselves that are free of logic. They compare it in this way to the echolocation used by bats. This was a head-scratcher for me. The next chapter, How We Use Reasons, was good. I do not agree with the next chapter, Could Reason be a Module? The supporting argument, to me, kept mixing intuition and reasoning. Which one is supposed to be the module? Then they proceed to argue that at least most animals do not reason. They don't call out any that do, but they don't close the door. Here the authors set up Clever Hans as a straw horse (thanks for the picture) as do not describe the cognitive abilities of animals as science has shown they are.
I think that beings without complex language almost certainly have less complex needs to reason. They build their relationships and their individual and group rules on gestures and their expectations on past behaviors. They respond to another animal misunderstanding them by either telling them they are wrong (putting their ears back, charging, growling, making the sort of attack that you may have seen in dogs correcting pack behavior or mother cats dissuading their young from repeating what has just happened) or by just running away. Animals create and use social rules. The authors ignore this in describing why they do not "reason." I would argue that many animals engage in self-promotion, whether this is reason or not. Most of this chapter does not even speak to the question that titles it.
I read the rest of the book and I think the authors are correct in that at least one function of reason is to justify ourselves. Many people have pointed this out before over centuries. It is common currency in regular conversation ("He's a blowhard"). I think reason (something less abstract than intuition) matters in establishing rules and social order. To have rules means some being thought some things were the right thing to do, acted that way and sought to lead or enforce the behavior of others. They may have intuited the "reason" for the rules, but the rules themselves are social.
Given that the word Reason has such a vast meaning it is as useless as Belief in describing anything -- a lot of misunderstandings arise because a speaker has not said what she means by either word. Both of these concepts, in all of their meanings, arise entirely from inside minds and do not describe anything outside the mind -- even to Descartes, who wondered if all of it was in the mind of a butterfly. I also did not appreciate the flybys of Roger Bacon, who was one of the many to notice the disconnect between interior thoughts against exterior reality. He took a step, although it was up to his relative Francis Bacon, who added the hypothesis to construct the Scientific Method, a means of testing thought against reality as we can best observe it.
Near the end of the book I realized that I was missing the scientific evidence because the authors were approaching the topic entirely from the runway of philosophy. Did they consider its absence a feature, not a bug? See paragraph above for why that did not work for me. I see it as misguided to talk about inbuilt modules, waving the examples of fear of snakes and hot stoves, without involving science.
I love the wonderful cover cartoon by Saul Steinberg. That, and the positive reviews, were what kept this book on my future reading list for such a long time, and kept me slogging through it hoping the next chapter would be the one I was waiting for.
I was just expecting a better-argued and more coherent book. I think the cover cartoon illustrates the book in a way that the authors did not intend.
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