Conversely it could just be a matter of habits playing out in in my dreaming self; that I habitually pay more attention to arguments than priors, or habitually evaluate arguments deliberately but priors intuitively.

From what I've read of lucid dreaming, one of the standard techniques is to periodically & habitually do 'dream checks' in the hopes that while asleep one will out of habit do a dream check, realize it's a dream, and then do whatever. This seems like a fairly complex mental argument, and similar to what you did.