Prisoners of Reason

In this contribution, the prisoner’s dilemma is revisited and taken as an example par excellence for the problems with reductionist reasoning. It is related to recent findings in evolutionary psychology and also set into the broad context of critiques against rationalism as such. It will be argued that rationality goes well beyond traditional logic and reductionist reasoning based on it. Complex decision making in a complex world is very much a matter of learning and adaptation, but also of understanding things in their context considering their interconnections. Reasoning has to reflect that in order not to run into severe problems. Since everyday reasoning is not independent of the context in which it takes place, the rules of reasoning can be valid only with respect to a particular domain and scenario. The paper shows first steps towards a logic that is based on evolutionary methods. A good solution in the prisoner’s dilemma is one that can be reused in the context of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, that is, that would be reused if faced with the same situation as well.