Two Interesting Theories of Reason Social reasoning and the narrative paradigm

I have been working in the Knowledge Management field for over twenty years, and I am still amazed when I stumble over theories and ideas I should have learned about years ago.

Last year, I uncovered The Argumentive Theory of Human Reasoning – a theory proposed by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier in 2010 that argues that we evolved to reason socially, not as individuals.

And then, only last week, while digging deeper into the concept of narrative, I came across Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, which posits that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events. The theory further claims that stories are more persuasive than arguments.

In some ways, this is not new to me; Dave Snowden, Steve Denning, and many others have been talking and writing about storytelling and narrative for many years, but strangely, I never heard them mention the Narrative Paradigm and Walter Fischer.

These two theories, if valid, totally reconceptualize how we reason and are already making an impact on how I think about Conversational Leadership.

Midjourney

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