Evidence for the Innateness of Deontic Reasoning

When reasoning about deontic rules (what one may, should, or should not do in a given set of circumstances), reasoners adopt a violation-detection strategy, a strategy they do not adopt when reasoning about indicative rules (descriptions of purported state of affairs). I argue that this indicative-deontic distinction constitutes a primitive in the cognitive architecture. To support this claim, I show that this distinc- tion emerges early in development, is observed regardless of the cultural background of the reasoner, and can be selectively disrupted at the neurological level. I also argue that this distinction emerged as a result of selective pressure favouring the evolution of reasoning strategies that determine survival within dominance hierarchies. If seven decades of empirical investigations of human reasoning have shown us nothing else, they have shown us that our reasoning strategies vary as a