What good is moral reasoning?

The role of reasoning in our moral lives has been increasingly called into question by moral psychology. Not only are intuitions
guiding many of our moral judgments and decisions, with reasoning only finding post-hoc rationalizations, but reasoning can
sometimes play a negative role, by finding excuses for our moral violations. The observations fit well with the argumentative
theory of reasoning (Mercier H, Sperber D, Behav Brain Sci, in press-b), which claims that reasoning evolved to find and evaluate
arguments in dialogic contexts. This theory explains the strong confirmation bias that reasoning displays when it produces
arguments, which in turn explains its tendency to rationalize our decisions. But this theory also predicts that people should
be able to evaluate arguments felicitously and that, as a result, people should reason better in groups, when they are confronted
with other people’s arguments. Groups are able to converge on better moral judgments. It is argued that reasoning and argumentation
play an important role in our everyday moral lives, and a defense of the value of reasoning for moral change is offered.