# Contested concept: function of reasoning

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: The claim 'not for truth' can coexist with 'produces truth in groups' only by distinguishing evolved function from outcome; critics may read it as denying reasoning's epistemic value.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/function of reasoning` (data: `/concept/function of reasoning.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments)** — used in 5 claim(s)
- **Beneficial current effects: reasoning yields truth, better understanding, and good decisions in groups and education** — used in 4 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Deliberative democracy has been shown to work quite effectively in quite a few cases.](/claim/claim_1bcfc157d0e9.md) _(sense: Beneficial current effects: reasoning yields truth, better understanding, and good decisions in groups and education)_
- [Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.](/claim/claim_2db9b2856249.md) _(sense: Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments))_
- [And together, [when people criticize each other's reasoning], we hope the truth comes out.](/claim/claim_3aa52ec44b56.md) _(sense: Beneficial current effects: reasoning yields truth, better understanding, and good decisions in groups and education)_
- [That [the need to convince others who reject what they are told, using reasons which they evaluate] is why reasoning evolved.](/claim/claim_3e08581d7fe9.md) _(sense: Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments))_
- [You say that mechanism X (in our case, reasoning) has a given function. We think that reasoning, in our case, has the function of arguing. …](/claim/claim_883e31ec7734.md) _(sense: Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments))_
- [Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth.](/claim/claim_a874021091b5.md) _(sense: Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments))_
- [the function of reasoning, the reason reasoning evolved, is to help us convince other people and to evaluate their arguments.](/claim/claim_da9c1049da45.md) _(sense: Selected-effect: the reason reasoning evolved (persuasion and evaluation of arguments))_
- [when people are actually able to reason together, they are much more likely to reach a correct solution [than when they reason on their own…](/claim/claim_e9f0528e034f.md) _(sense: Beneficial current effects: reasoning yields truth, better understanding, and good decisions in groups and education)_
- [If you take a group of kids and you give them a problem to solve together, and you give them certain constraints, then you obtain a much, m…](/claim/claim_f6e577401e31.md) _(sense: Beneficial current effects: reasoning yields truth, better understanding, and good decisions in groups and education)_