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Article published In:
Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 29:1 (2022) ► pp.111–134

Modular vs. diagrammatic reasoning

The pragmatist side of human understanding

| Russian State University for the Humanities | National Research University Higher School of Economics
| Hong Kong Baptist University | Tallinn University of Technology | National Research University Higher School of Economics

Mercier and Sperber (MS) have ventured to undermine an age-old assumption in logic, namely the presence of premise-conclusion structures, in favor of two novel claims: that reasoning is an evolutionary product of a reason-intuiting module in the mind, and that theories of logic teach next to nothing about the mechanisms of how inferences are drawn in that module. The present paper begs to differ: logic is indispensable in formulating conceptions of cognitive elements of reasoning, and MS is no less exempt from taking notice of premise-conclusion structures than the commonplace theories of reasoning are. Our counterclaim is realized in terms of diagrammatic reasoning dating back to Charles Peirce’s pragmaticism. The upshot is that pragmatist logic restores the premise-conclusion structures in argumentation, supplants reason-intuition module with logical content, and validates good reasoning as an indispensable resource evident to all rational minds that claim ownership of reason and understanding.

Keywords: reasoning, inference, modular mind, Mercier & Sperber, Peirce, pragmaticism, logical diagrams, logical graphs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sperber and Mercier: What human reasoning is
  • 3.Peirce’s habits: The schemata and skeleta of reasoning
  • 4.Graphical representation of reasoning
  • 5.Discussion on MS and diagrammatic reasoning
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Declaration
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21002.pie
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