Intuitive and reflective inferences

This chapter proposes a principled distinction between two types of inferences: 'intuitive' and 'reflective' (or reasoning proper). It grounds this distinction in a modular view of the human mind where metarepresentational modules play an important role in explaining the peculiarities of human psychological evolution. The chapter defends the hypothesis that the main function of reflective inference is to produce and evaluate arguments occurring in interpersonal communication rather than to help individual ratiocination. This function, it claims, helps explain important aspects of reasoning. The discussion reviews some of the existing evidence and argues that it gives support to this approach.