A hallmark of intelligent behavior is rationality – the disposition and ability to think analytically to make decisions that maximize expected utility or follow the laws of probability. However, the question remains as to whether rationality and intelligence are empirically distinct, as does the question of what cognitive mechanisms underlie individual differences in rationality. In a sample of 331 participants, we assessed the relationship between rationality and intelligence. There was a common ability underpinning performance on some, but not all, rationality (...) tests. Latent factors representing rationality and general intelligence were strongly correlated (r =.54), but their correlation fell well short of unity. Rationality correlated significantly with fluid intelligence (r =.56), working memory capacity (r =.44), and attention control (r =.49). Attention control fully accounted for the relationship between working memory capacity and rationality, and partially accounted for the relationship between fluid intelligence and rationality. We conclude by speculating about factors rationality tests may tap that other cognitive ability tests miss, and outline directions for further research. (shrink)

There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it's impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there's a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics (...) of externalism argue that it flirts with incoherence by severing the intimate link between judgment and action. Drawing on resources from phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, analytic action theory, and recent “hybrid models” of skilled action, I argue that one route beyond this theoretical impasse is to understand akrasia as a form of skillful pre-reflective intentional action. This strategy, I argue, preserves the internalist insight that there is indeed an intimate relation between judgment and intentional action; and it also confirms the externalist claim that this relation is defeasible, but it does so without falling into incoherence. (shrink)

To explain agent-identification behaviours, universalist theories in the biological and cognitive sciences have posited mental mechanisms thought to be universal to all humans, such as agent detection and face recognition mechanisms. These universalist theories have paid little attention to how particular sociocultural or historical contexts interact with the psychobiological processes of agent-identification. In contrast to universalist theories, contextualist theories appeal to particular historical and sociocultural contexts for explaining agent-identification. Contextualist theories tend to adopt idiographic methods aimed at recording the heterogeneity (...) of human behaviours across history, space, and cultures. Defenders of the universalist approach tend to criticise idiographic methods because such methods can lead to relativism or may lack generality. To overcome explanatory limitations of proposals that adopt either universalist or contextualist approaches in isolation, I propose a philosophical model that integrates contributions from both traditions: the psycho-historical theory of agent-identification. This theory investigates how the tracking processes that humans use for identifying agents interact with the unique socio-historical contexts that support agent-identification practices. In integrating hypotheses about the history of agents with psychological and epistemological principles regarding agent-identification, the theory can generate novel hypotheses regarding the distinction between recognition-based, heuristic-based, and explanation-based agent-identification. (shrink)

For decades, technologies that ease information sharing (e.g., the wireless telegraph; Mckernon, 1925) have inspired concerns about the proliferation of misinformation. Today, these worries often c...

Sociologists increasingly draw on dual-process models of cognition to account for the ways context, cognition, and action interrelate. Drawing from 40 interviews with improvisers and observations from improvisational theater, I find that dual-process model scholarship is limited in three respects: It does not consider how cognition operates in situations where order and disruption are concurrent, it fails to realize there is interindividual variation in cognitive processing, and it underestimates the creativity emerging through automatic processes. Interactions in improv contain elements of (...) both order and disruption, and they place demands on automatic and deliberate cognition simultaneously. Improvisers respond to these competing demands through either automatic or deliberate thinking dispositions, which are engendered through explicit instruction, practical experience, and artistic commitments. These dispositions, in turn, shape creative decision-making, predicting interindividual differences in how improvisers respond to contingencies on stage. I conclude by discussing the implications for culture, cognition, and action. (shrink)

El objetivo del artículo consiste en poner en diálogo tres líneas de investigación dentro de la epistemología contemporánea: la Epistemología de la Virtud, el paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada y la Teoría Argumentativa de la Razón. Frente al problema que interesa analizar aquí, a saber, la búsqueda de un marco teórico que permita diseñar estrategias pedagógicas (tanto al interior de la enseñanza de la filosofía como fuera de ella) sobre premisas realistas, la Epistemología de la Virtud será presentada como una (...) corriente marcadamente optimista desde el punto de vista epistémico. El paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada representará la contrapartida de dicha corriente, en la medida en que parece conducir a un pesimismo marcado respecto de la posibilidad de diseñar estrategias que permitan perfeccionar las prácticas epistémicas de los sujetos. Frente a estos dos polos, se sugerirá que la Teoría Argumentativa de la Razón (desarrollada en la última década por Hugo Mercier y Dan Sperber) representa una alternativa prometedora por dos razones fundamentales: en primer lugar, porque ofrece una respuesta al problema (enfrentado por el paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada) del carácter adaptativo de la razón humana desde un punto de vista evolutivo; en segundo lugar, porque permite superar el pesimismo epistémico esencial al paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada al momento de planificar estrategias pedagógicas realistas y efectivas. (shrink)

Many psychologists and neuroscientists still see executive functions as independent, domain-general, supervisory functions that are often dissociated from more “low-level” associative learning. Here, we suggest that executive functions very much build on associative learning, and argue that executive functions might be better understood as culture-sensitive cognitive gadgets, rather than as ready-made cognitive instincts.

Common-sense (or folk) psychology holds that (generally) we do what we do for the reasons we have. This common-sense approach is embodied in claims like ‘I went to the kitchen because I wanted a drink’ and ‘She took a coat because she thought it might rain and hoped to stay dry’. However, the veracity of these common-sense psychological explanations has been challenged by experimental evidence (primarily from behavioural economics and social psychology) which appears to show that individuals are systematically irrational—that (...) often we do not do what we do because of the reasons we have. Recently, some of the same experimental evidence has also been used to level a somewhat different challenge at the common-sense view, arguing that the overarching aim of reasoning is not to deliver better or more reason-governed decisions for individual reasoners, but to improve group decision making or to protect an individual’s sense of self. This paper explores the range of challenges that experimental work has been taken to raise for the common-sense approach and suggests some potential responses. Overall, I argue that the experimental evidence surveyed should not lead us to a rejection of individual rationality. (shrink)

The dual-process model of cognition but most especially its reflective component, system 2 processing, shows strong conceptual links with critical thinking. In fact, the salient characteristics of system 2 processing are so strikingly close to that of critical thinking, that it is tempting to claim that critical thinking is system 2 processing, no more and no less. In this article, I consider the two sides of that claim: Does critical thinking always require system 2 processing? And does system 2 processing (...) always result in critical thinking? I argue that it is plausible and helpful to consider that critical thinking requires system 2 processing. In particular, this assumption can provide interesting insights and benchmarks for critical thinking education. On the other hand, I show that system 2 processing can result in a range of outcomes which are either contradictory with critical thinking, or of debatable social desirability—which suggests that there is more to critical thinking than mere system 2 processing, and more to system 2 processing than just critical thinking. (shrink)

Strategic interactions have been studied extensively in the area of judgment and decision-making. However, so far no specific measure of a decision-maker's ability to be successful in strategic interactions has been proposed and tested. Our contribution is the development of a measure of strategic ability that borrows from both game theory and psychology. Such measure is aimed at providing an estimation of the likelihood of success in many social activities that involve strategic interaction among multiple decision-makers. To construct a reliable (...) measure of strategic ability, that we propose to call ``Strategic Quotient'' (SQ), we designed a test where each item is a game and where, therefore, the individual score obtained depends on the distribution of choices of other decision-makers taking the test. The test is designed to provide information on the abilities related to two dimensions, mentalization and rationality, that we argue are crucial to strategic success, with each dimension being characterized by two main factors. Principal component analysis on preliminary data shows that indeed four factors (two for rationality, two for mentalization) account for strategic success in most of the strategically simpler games of the test. Moreover, two more strategically sophisticated games are inserted in the test and are used to investigate if and to what extent the four factors obtained by simpler games can predict strategic success in more sophisticated strategic interactions. Overall, the collected empirical evidence points to the possibility of building a SQ measure using only simple games designed to capture information about the four identified factors. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the hypothesis that “thinking in opposites” might facilitate insight problem solving. For example, if the image relating to a problem is oriented horizontally, it may...

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to (...) motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well-supported theory of consciousness—higher-order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Dual process theory proposes clusters of features that form two dichotomous groups in cognition. One standing internal issue is defining what the reference of these two dichotomous groups could be in the mind or brain. Does dual process theory speak of two systems, types, minds, modes, kinds or just metaphors? A particular common answer is that differences in clusters of features are evidence of different underlying systems, often called system 1 and system 2. However, the suggestion to abandon the ‘system’ (...) terminology is now common in the literature, but the consequences of doing so need to be addressed. This work reviews and critically discusses previous suggestions. (shrink)

Dual Process Theory is currently a popular theory for explaining why we show bounded rationality in reasoning and decision-making tasks. This theory proposes there must be a sharp distinction in thinking to explain two clusters of correlational features. One cluster describes a fast and intuitive process, while the other describes a slow and reflective one. A problem for this theory is identifying a common principle that binds these features together, explaining why they form a unity, the unity problem. To solve (...) it, a hypothesis is developed combining embodied predictive processing with symbolic classical approaches. The hypothesis, simplified, states that Type 1 processes are bound together because they rely on embodied predictive processing whereas Type 2 processes form a unity because they are accomplished by symbolic classical cognition. To show that this is likely the case, the features of Dual Process Theory are discussed in relation to these frameworks. (shrink)

A divide exists in the creativity literature as to whether relatively more or less executive processing is beneficial to creative thinking. To explore this issue, we employ an individual differences perspective informed by dual-process theories in which it is assumed that people vary in the extent to which they rely on autonomous or controlled processing . We find that those more willing and/or able to engage Type 2 processing are more likely to successfully make creative connections in tasks requiring the (...) unification of disparate elements and the novelty of generated items, but not in some other indices of creativity, namely, cognitive flexibility and fluency. Implications for the role of executive processing in creative thinking are discussed in the context of DPTs. We situate the ability to make remote connections alongside other advanced higher order thinking capabilities that are unique to humans. (shrink)

This study tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult religious adherents, acquired beliefs about the extraordinary characteristics of God coexist with, rather than replace, an initial representation of God formed by co-option of the evolved person concept. In three experiments, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions about persons and acquired Christian beliefs about God were consistent or inconsistent. Participants were less accurate and slower to respond to inconsistent versus consistent (...) statements, suggesting that the core intuitions both coexisted alongside and interfered with the acquired beliefs. In Experiment 2 when responding under time pressure participants were disproportionately more likely to make errors on inconsistent versus consistent statements than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of interference requires cognitive resources the functioning of which decreases under cognitive load. In Experiment 3 a plausible alternative interpretation of these findings was ruled out by demonstrating that the response accuracy and time differences on consistent versus inconsistent statements occur for God—a supernatural religious entity—but not for a natural religious entity. (shrink)

Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show that the (...) principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory--in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things. (shrink)

Influential work on reasoning and decision-making has popularised the idea that sound reasoning requires correction of fast, intuitive thought processes by slower and more demanding deliberation. We present seven studies that question this corrective view of human thinking. We focused on the very problem that has been widely featured as the paradigmatic illustration of the corrective view, the well-known bat-and-ball problem. A two-response paradigm in which people were required to give an initial response under time pressure and cognitive load allowed (...) us to identify the presumed intuitive response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Across our studies, we observe that correct final responses are often non-corrective in nature. Many reasoners who manage to answer the bat-and-ball problem correctly after deliberation already solved it correctly when they reasoned under conditions that minimised deliberation in the initial response phase. This suggests that sound bat-and-ball reasoners do not necessarily need to deliberate to correct their intuitions; their intuitions are often already correct. Pace the corrective view, findings suggest that in these cases, they deliberate to verify correct intuitive insights. (shrink)

Misinformation is a serious concern for societies across the globe. To design effective interventions to combat the belief in and spread of misinformation, we must understand which psychological processes influence susceptibility to misinformation. This paper tests the widely assumed – but largely untested – claim that emotionally provocative headlines are associated with worse ability to identify true versus false headlines. Consistent with this proposal, we found correlational evidence that overall emotional response at the headline level is associated with diminished truth (...) discernment, except for experienced anger which was associated with increased truth discernment. The second set of studies tested a popular emotion regulation intervention where people were asked to apply either emotional suppression or emotion reappraisal techniques when considering the veracity of several headlines. In contrast to the correlation results, we found no evidence that emotion regulation helped people distinguish false from true news headlines. (shrink)

Dual process models of higher cognition have become very influential in the cognitive sciences. The popular Default-Interventionist model has long favoured a serial view on the interaction between...

A framework is presented to better characterize the role of individual differences in information processing style and their interplay with contextual factors in determining decision making quality. In Experiment 1, we show that individual differences in information processing style are flexible and can be modified by situational factors. Specifically, a situational manipulation that induced an analytical mode of thought improved decision quality. In Experiment 2, we show that this improvement in decision quality is highly contingent on the compatibility between the (...) dominant thinking mode and the nature of the task. That is, encouraging an intuitive mode of thought led to better performance on an intuitive task but hampered performance on an analytical task. The reverse pattern was obtained when an analytical mode of thought was encouraged. We discuss the implications of these results for the assessment of decision making competence, and suggest practical directions to help individuals better adjust their information processing style to the situation at hand and make optimal decisions. (shrink)

Dual-Process Theories (D-PTs) claim there are two qualitatively different types of processes in the human brain-mind. Despite forming the basis for several areas of cognitive science, they are still shrouded in ambiguity: critics erroneously attack D-PTs as a whole (e.g., Evans and Stanovich Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 2013), the qualitative/quantitative distinction is not clear enough (De Neys Perspectives on Psychological Science 16 (6): 1412–1427, 2021; Dewey 2022) and, given this criterion, deciding between qualitative or quantitative differences may even be (...) scientifically irrelevant (De Neys 2021). As a way of disambiguating the discussion and clarifying what exactly means to claim the existence of a second type of process, I define two possible categories of D-PT: The substantial and the instrumental. In the substantial case, Type 2 processes are subpersonal level ones. In the instrumental case, Type 2 processing is a personal level phenomenon that does not necessarily imply subpersonal level Type 2 processes. Discussing the different implications of each of the categories, I use as a main example to illustrate the ambiguity – and the exercise of disambiguation – the model proposed by Evans and Stanovich (2013), making clear its substantial character, and contrast it with Frankish’ (2009) – a clear case of instrumental D-PT. Finally, I discuss the contributions this distinction can make. By making the discussion clearer, it can provide a relatively unanimous framework for dual- and single-process theorists (the instrumental version) and clearer desiderata for those wishing to defend the substantive one. (shrink)

Contemporary studies in unconscious cognition are essentially founded on dissociation, i.e., on how it dissociates with respect to conscious mental processes and representations. This is claimed to be in so many and diverse ways that one is often lost in dissociation. In order to reduce this state of confusion we here carry out two major tasks: based on the central distinction between cognitive processes and representations, we identify and isolate the main dissociation paradigms; we then critically analyze their key tenets (...) and reported findings. (shrink)

We examined a large set of conditional inference data compiled from several previous studies and asked three questions: How is normative performance related to intelligence? Does negative conclusion bias stem from Type 1 or Type 2 processing? Does implicit negation bias stem from Type 1 or Type 2 processing? Our analysis demonstrated that rejecting denial of the antecedent and affirmation of the consequent inferences was positively correlated with intelligence, while endorsing modus tollens inferences was not; that the occurrence of negative (...) conclusion bias was related to the extent of Type 2 processing; and that the occurrence of implicit negation bias was not related to the extent of Type 2 processing. We conclude that negative conclusion bias is, at least in part, a product of Type 2 processing, while implicit negation bias is not. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

This paper suggests that autistic people relate to themselves via a third-person perspective, an objective and explicit mode of access, while neurotypical people tend to access the different dimensions of their self through a first-person perspective. This approach sheds light on autistic traits involving interactions with others, usage of narratives, sensitivity and interoception, and emotional consciousness. Autistic people seem to access these dimensions through comparatively indirect and effortful processes, while neurotypical development enables a more intuitive sense of self.

A widespread claim, which I call ‘the Emotionality Claim’, is that imagination but not supposition is intimately linked to emotion. In more cognitive jargon, imagination is connected to the affect system, whereas supposition is not. EC is open to several interpretations which yield very different views about the nature of supposition. The literature lacks an in-depth analysis of EC which sorts out these different readings and ways to carve supposition and imagination at their joints. The aim of this paper is (...) to fill this gap. I shall argue that existing readings of EC fail to properly account for the emotional asymmetry between imagination and supposition. The tendency is to start from narrow conceptions of both imagination and supposition. I shall argue for a novel interpretation of EC pivoting on different ways a mental state can connect to the affect system. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy brings empirical methods to philosophy. These methods are used to probe how people think about philosophically interesting things such as knowledge, morality, and freedom. This paper explores the contribution that qualitative methods have to make in this enterprise. I argue that qualitative methods have the potential to make a much greater contribution than they have so far. Along the way, I acknowledge a few types of resistance that proponents of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy might encounter, and provide (...) reasons to think they are ill-founded. (shrink)

The dual process theory is a view that there are two information-processing systems in our mind. It has been popular in cognitive and social psychology for the last few decades, but this simplified formulation of the theory has problems. In this paper I shall review the recent developments made by the dual process theorists to meet those challenges and indicate the directions the theory could take. In particular I shall discuss possible defining properties or mechanisms of the two systems. I (...) argue that working memory and its neural correlates, but not cognitive decoupling, are the underlying mechanisms of the "reflective" system while the "intuitive" system may have rather external underlying mechanisms, i.e., natural selection. This renders both systems homeostatic property cluster kinds but they are based on different kinds of mechanisms. (shrink)

The death anxiety is one of the leading existential problems. Religiosity, on other hand, plays an important role in coping with death anxiety. However, studies on the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity have revealed conflicting results. The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between religiosity and death anxiety and to identify possible causes of conflicting results. The study used a systematic review method to examine both correlational and experimental studies. The studies reviewed draw attention to (...) two important results. First, although there are generally inconsistent relationships between religiosity and death anxiety, especially intrinsic religious orientation is negatively associated with death anxiety. Second, mortality salience increases the religious beliefs of the religious while producing inconsistent results for the nonreligious. On the other hand, these studies have some critical limitations. One of these limitations, the measures of religiosity and death anxiety used in studies wide variety, and their reliability and cross-cultural validity can be problematic. Implicitly measuring religiosity and death anxiety can help solve this problem. Another limitation is that the experimental studies were very few and those that did were mostly done with participants from the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Therefore, there is a need to conduct studies (especially experimental) from different religious and cultural traditions to overcome this limitation. The current review is essential to have better understanding the relationship between religiosity and fear of death and guiding future studies. (shrink)

The principles offered by beliefs affect the thinking styles of individuals. Although it has been argued in recent studies that believers and non-believers have different thinking styles, there are few studies examining the relationship between belief and cognitive styles in Muslim groups. In this study, the relationships between intrinsic religious motivation and "critical thinking", which is one of the most desired thinking skills today, and " dichotomous thinking", which can be expressed as black-and-white thinking and primarily associated with negative structures, (...) were examined. The study was carried out with 395 university students, and the data was obtained by a socio-demographic information form, the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale, the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale, and the Dichotomous Thinking Scale. Findings suggested a positive significant relationship between intrinsic religious motivation and critical thinking and dichotomous thinking, and a positive significant relationship between critical thinking and dichotomous thinking. Regarding the relationship between dichotomous thinking and critical thinking, intrinsic religious motivation had a mediating role. The Islamic faith often invites reasoning and thinking and affirms this way of thinking; at the same time, it offers various conceptual tools for dichotomous thinking with discourses such as heaven-hell, good-evil, dark-light, and faith-denial. Although critical thinking and dichotomous thinking are seen as opposite constructs, the findings have been interpreted as the Islamic belief supporting both critical thinking and dichotomous thinking at the same time, thus reducing the rigidity of dichotomous thinking. The findings were discussed in the light of the relevant literature, and suggestions were made for further research. (shrink)

Michael T. Stuart (2021 and 2022) has proposed imagination as an intellectual dual‐process virtue, consisting of imagination1 (underwritten by cognitive Type 1 processing) and imagination2 (supported by Type 2 processing). This paper investigates the consequences of taking such an account seriously. It proposes that the dual‐process view of imagination allows us to incorporate recent insights from virtue epistemology, providing a fresh perspective on how imagination can be epistemically reliable. The argument centers on the distinction between General Reliability (GR) and Functional (...) System Reliability (FSR), for example in relation to Kengo Miyazono and Uko Tooming's (2023) argument for epistemic generativity. Furthermore, the paper claims that the dual‐process virtue account enables us to integrate a wide range of findings from the literature on epistemology and imagination. Moreover, it suggests a novel way to distinguish the virtues of creativity and imagination and presents a case for viewing imagination as a virtue rather than a skill. (shrink)

Psychologists are paying increasing attention to a distinction between two ways of thinking. Cognitive psychologists discern between non-reflective “intuitive” and critical reflective “analytic” thinking. Cultural psychologists discern between context-focused “holistic” and object-focused “analytic” thinking. Both find the former strongly correlated with religious beliefs and Asian cultures, the latter with secular beliefs and Euro-American cultures. Yet, recent studies convincingly suggest: first, that analytic thinking does not just relate to secular beliefs but also to alternative beliefs that straddle the boundaries between secular (...) and religious worldviews; second, that critical reflective thinking includes both the holistic context-focus of Asian religions and the analytic object-focus of European philosophies and sciences. This article supports these recent studies in the psychology of religion based on recent studies from the history and sociology of religion and a discourse analysis of interviews with members of a small-scale twenty-first-century spiritual group, as an example. We show that people who identify as spiritual in a metamodern context use both holistic and analytic thinking in creating alternative worldviews, which dialectically reconcile beliefs that many within modern western cultures would consider contradictory. We conclude that this both/and logic challenges theories and stereotypes about “secular versus religious” and “eastern versus western” thinking. (shrink)

In the Republic, Phaedrus, and Timaeus, Socrates holds that the psyche is complex, or has three distinct and semi-autonomous sources of motivation, which he calls the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts. While the rational part determines what is best overall and motivates us to pursue it, the spirited and appetitive parts incline us toward different objectives, such as victory, honor, and esteem, or the satisfaction of our desires for food, drink, and sex. While it is obvious that Socrates primarily characterizes (...) and distinguishes the parts in terms of what each desires and pursues, what is less often brought to the fore is that he also characterizes and distinguishes the parts in terms of how they think. More specifically, he claims that the rational part forms its beliefs on the basis of rational calculation, while the spirited and appetitive parts form their beliefs on the basis of how things appear, without scrutinizing those appearances. Socrates’ dual characterization of the parts of the soul raises a question: why does he characterize each part as having the particular desires and cognitive abilities that he does? In general, how do facts about what a part desires relate to facts about how it thinks? In this paper, I suggest an answer to this question, one that I hope sheds light on the nature of the parts of the soul and so on Plato’s theory of tripartition more generally. I conclude by showing that Socrates’ theory bears a notable resemblance to contemporary dual process theories of judgment, according to which we have two distinct processes for forming judgments, one which is broadly akin to reflection and another to intuition. (shrink)

Society is facing uncertainty on a multitude of domains and levels: usually, reasoning and decisions about political, economic, or health issues must be made under uncertainty. Among various approaches to probability, this chapter presents the coherence approach to probability as a method for uncertainty management. The authors explain the role of uncertainty in the context of important societal issues like legal reasoning and vaccination hesitancy. Finally, the chapter presents selected psychological factors which impact probabilistic representation and reasoning and discusses what (...) society can and cannot learn from the coherence approach from theoretical and practical perspectives. (shrink)