Abstract

I present arguments giving us reason to reconsider whether confirmation bias is really such a significant explanandum theories of reasoning need to make sense of and, by extension, whether any advantage the argumentative theory has over its rivals here, is the weightily explanatory virtue it has often been supposed to be. More generally, the extent to which accounting for ‘confirmation bias’ is an important desideratum for theories of reasoning has been overstated. Theory choice between them should (to say the least) not focus on their capacity to make sense of supposed cognitive deficits like the alleged confirmation bias.