In light of recent social psychological literature, I expand Miranda Fricker’s important notion of testimonial injustice. A fair portion of Fricker’s account rests on an older paradigm of stereotype and prejudice. Given recent empirical work, I argue for what I dub prescriptive credibility deficits in which a backlash effect leads to the assignment of a diminished level of credibility to persons who act in counter-stereotypic manners, thereby flouting prescriptive stereotypes. The notion of a prescriptive credibility deficit is not merely an (...) interesting conceptual addendum that can be appended to Fricker’s theory without need for further emendation. I develop the wider implications of prescriptive credibility deficits and argue that they pose a challenge to Fricker’s conception of the function of credibility assignments in conversational exchange and how a virtuous listener should respond to the potential threat of a prejudicial stereotype affecting her credibility assignments. (shrink)

The discovery of conjunctive causes--factors that act in concert to produce or prevent an effect--has been explained by purely covariational theories. Such theories assume that concomitant variations in observable events directly license causal inferences, without postulating the existence of unobservable causal relations. This article discusses problems with these theories, proposes a causal-power theory that overcomes the problems, and reports empirical evidence favoring the new theory. Unlike earlier models, the new theory derives (a) the conditions under which covariation implies conjunctive causation (...) and (b) functions relating observable events to unobservable conjunctive causal strength. This psychological theory, which concerns simple cases involving 2 binary candidate causes and a binary effect, raises questions about normative statistics for testing causal hypotheses regarding categorical data resulting from discrete variables. (shrink)

Humans have long been characterized as poor probabilistic reasoners when presented with explicit numerical information. Bayesian word problems provide a well-known example of this, where even highly educated and cognitively skilled individuals fail to adhere to mathematical norms. It is widely agreed that natural frequencies can facilitate Bayesian reasoning relative to normalized formats (e.g. probabilities, percentages), both by clarifying logical set-subset relations and by simplifying numerical calculations. Nevertheless, between-study performance on “transparent” Bayesian problems varies widely, and generally remains rather unimpressive. (...) We suggest there has been an over-focus on this representational facilitator (i.e. transparent problem structures) at the expense of the specific logical and numerical processing requirements and the corresponding individual abilities and skills necessary for providing Bayesian-like output given specific verbal and numerical input. We further suggest that understanding this task-individual pair could benefit from considerations from the literature on mathematical cognition, which emphasizes text comprehension and problem solving, along with contributions of online executive working memory, metacognitive regulation, and relevant stored knowledge and skills. We conclude by offering avenues for future research aimed at identifying the stages in problem solving at which correct versus incorrect reasoners depart, and how individual difference might influence this time point. (shrink)

Humans and animals make inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge. In contrast, many models of rational inference treat the mind as a Laplacean Demon, equipped with unlimited time, knowledge, and computational might. Following H. Simon's notion of satisficing, the authors have proposed a family of algorithms based on a simple psychological mechanism: one-reason decision making. These fast and frugal algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. By computer simulation, the (...) authors held a competition between the satisficing "Take The Best" algorithm and various "rational" inference procedures. The Take The Best algorithm matched or outperformed all competitors in inferential speed and accuracy. This result is an existence proof that cognitive mechanisms capable of successful performance in the real world do not need to satisfy the classical norms of rational inference. (shrink)

Joshua Greene has put forward the bold empirical hypothesis that deontology is a confabulation of moral emotions. Deontological philosophy does not steam from "true" moral reasoning, but from emotional reactions, backed up by post hoc rationalizations which play no role in generating the initial moral beliefs. In this paper, I will argue against the confabulation hypothesis. First, I will highlight several points in Greene’s discussion of confabulation, and identify two possible models. Then, I will argue that the evidence does not (...) illustrate the relevant model of deontological confabulation. In fact, I will make the case that deontology is unlikely to be a confabulation because alarm-like emotions, which allegedly drive deontological theorizing, are resistant to be subject to confabulation. I will end by clarifying what kind of claims can the confabulation data support. The upshot of the final section is that confabulation data cannot be used to undermine deontological theory in itself, and ironically, if one commits to the claim that a deontological justification is a confabulation in a particular case, then the data suggests that in general deontology has a prima facie validity. (shrink)

I argue for three central theses: ‘intuition’ is ambiguous, in material object metaphysics ‘intuition’ refers to pre-theoretical beliefs, and these pre-theoretical beliefs are generated by an innate physical reasoning system. I begin by outlining the relevant background discussions on the nature of intuitions and their role in philosophy to motivate the need for a more careful investigation of the meaning of ‘intuition’ and the role of intuitions in specific sub-disciplines of philosophy. In chapters one and two I argue that ‘intuition’ (...) is ambiguous between an inflationary and deflationary sense. In the inflationary sense, ‘intuition’ refers to a priori intellectual seemings with a special phenomenology, conceptual etiology, and modal content. In the deflationary sense, ‘intuition’ refers to beliefs or inclinations to believe. In chapter three I specifically examine the use of intuitions in material object metaphysics and conclude that in this sub-community ‘intuition’ is used in the deflationary sense to refer to pre-theoretical beliefs. Drawing from research on infant cognition, in the final chapter I argue that intuitions regarding material object metaphysics are those judgments that arise from an innate physical reasoning system. Based on this empirical observation, I argue that metaphysicians ought to give preference to abstract intuitions over intuitions regarding concrete cases because these abstract intuitions reflect the innate structure of our physical reasoning mechanisms. (shrink)

If reason is a real causal force,operative in some, but not all ofour cognition and conation, then itought to be possible to tell anaturalistic story that distinguishes themind which is moved byreason from the mind which is movedby forces other than reason.This essay proposes some steps towardthat end. I proceed by showingthat it is possible to reconcile certainemerging psychological ideasabout the causal powers of themind/brain with a venerablephilosophical vision of reason as the facultyof norms. My accountof reason is psychologistic, social, (...) and consistent with anevolutionary approach to mind. The account preserves thenormativity by deflating it. But I argue that onlysuch deflated normativity has any chance of beingmade naturalistically respectable. (shrink)

Within cognitive science, mental processing is often construed as computation over mental representations—i.e., as the manipulation and transformation of mental representations in accordance with rules of the kind expressible in the form of a computer program. This foundational approach has encountered a long-standing, persistently recalcitrant, problem often called the frame problem; it is sometimes called the relevance problem. In this paper we describe the frame problem and certain of its apparent morals concerning human cognition, and we argue that these morals (...) have significant import regarding both the nature of moral normativity and the human capacity for mastering moral normativity. The morals of the frame problem bode well, we argue, for the claim that moral normativity is not fully systematizable by exceptionless general principles, and for the correlative claim that such systematizability is not required in order for humans to master moral normativity. (shrink)

During the last decade, scholars have identified a number of factors that pose significant challenges to effective business ethics education. This article offers a “coping-modeling, problem-solving” approach as one option for addressing these concerns. A rationale supporting the use of the CMPS framework for courses on ethical decision-making in business is provided, following which the implementation processes for this program are described. Evaluative data collected from N = 101 undergraduate business students enrolled in a third year required course on ethical (...) decision-making in business indicated that the CMPS model is a promising alternative for both overcoming teaching challenges and for facilitating skill acquisition in the areas of ethical recognition, judgment, and action. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This article aims at showing the need for a sound ethical and anthropological foundation of economics and business, and argues the importance of a correct understanding of human values and human nature for the sake of economics and of businesses themselves. It is suggested that the ethical-anthropological side of economics and business can be grasped by taking Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA) as major reference points. We hold that an “Aristotelian economics of virtues”, connected with the (...) CA’s notion of human richness, can promote the shift to the concept of personhood, and can lead to a more “humanized” business, by fostering human flourishing, the enhancement of human capabilities, and the pursuit of a more humane development for each and every person. (shrink)

Bluffing, a common and consequential form of competitive behavior, has been comparably ignored in the management literature, even though misleading one's rivals is suggested to be an advantageous skill in a multifaceted and highly competitive environment. To address this deficiency and advance scholarship on competitive dynamics, our study investigates the moral reasoning behind competitive bluffing and, using a simulated market-entry game, examines the performance effects of bluffing. Findings suggest that decision makers' views on the ethicality of bluffing competitors differ from (...) their beliefs on the ethicality of misleading other organizational stakeholders. Analysis also indicates that decision makers who view competitor bluffing as more ethical (less unethical) are more willing to engage in competitive bluffing. Finally, while bluffing is often thought to be an effective business practice, results show that in the context of repeated interaction, bluffing is not conducive to high levels of performance and, in fact, can have undesirable consequences. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of perceptions of product harm and consumer vulnerability on ethical evaluations of target marketing strategies. We first established whether subjects are able to accurately judge the harmfulness of a product through labeling alone, and whether they could differentiate consumers who were more or less vulnerable. The results suggest that without the presence of a prime, subjects who depended on implicit memory or guess were able to detect differences in “sin” (...) and “non-sin” products and consumer vulnerability, but were far less likely to be able to distinguish among high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability. The inability to accurately identify high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability impacted their perceptions of the ethicality of target marketing strategies, such that only four out of 18 target marketing strategies were judged as unethical. Thus, our findings contradict previous research that found subjects judged many more of the integrated strategies as unethical [Smith and Cooper- Martin, J Market 61 1]. Our results suggest that assessing ethical evaluations of strategies varying in product harm, and consumer vulnerability may only be relevant if consumers can accurately identify product harm. (shrink)

Moral choice, as a precursor to behaviour, has an important influence on the success or failure of business entities. According to Rest, 1983, Morality, Moral Behavior and Moral Development (John Wiley & Sons, New York), moral choice is prompted, amongst other things, by a motivational component. With this in mind, data obtained from a sample of four hundred financial sector operatives, employed in a rapidly developing region of China, was used to construct a relatively stable set of motivational typologies which (...) could be used to predict choice within an agency-based context. A non-egoist version of the agency theory was developed, which permitted the modelling of alternative heuristic patterns. Altruists and persons identified as bordering on the verge of being classified as psychological egoists, refused to reorganize their motives when responding to a problem that included both moral hazard and adverse selection criteria. It was also possible to identify certain personal and contextual issues which discriminated between the typologies. (shrink)

. Management scholars and practitioners often believe that individuals and organizations benefit by trusting their work contacts. (Husted, 1998; Sonnenberg, 1994) Trust is generally viewed as “good” and imperative to a modern functioning economy (Blau, 1964; Hosmer, 1995; Zucker, 1986) Consequently, scholars and practitioners have given scant attention to the “downside” of trust, despite the fact that trust involves taking risk under conditions of uncertainty (Rousseau et al., 1998) Recent corporate scandals show that people suffer when they misplace trust in (...) untrustworthy organizations and individuals. This paper develops a model of the causes and consequences of “over-trust,” which we define as a state where a trustor’s trust exceeds that which is warranted given the conditions. The antecedents of overtrust related to characteristics of the trustee, the trustor, and situational characteristics. We examine the role played by self-monitoring and perceived power base of the trustee as two key trustee characteristics. Among trustor characteristics, we examine the role (played by trustor’s core evaluation, core values). based on cultural affiliation), prior experiences with trustees, and use of habitual thinking behavior. Under characteristics of the situation, we examine the role played by uncertainty inherent in the situation, perceived threat from the context, degree of task interdependence, and organizational systems and routines. Next, we examine three consequences of over-trust – leniency in judging the trustee, delay in perceiving exploitation, and increased risk-taking. We conclude our paper by developing a set of guidelines that organizational members may employ to avoid over-trust. (shrink)

Every time another corporate scandal captures media headlines, the ‘bad apple vs. bad barrel’ discussion starts anew. Yet this debate overlooks the influence of the broader societal context on organizational behavior. In this article, we argue that misbehaviors of organizations (the ‘barrels’) and their members (the ‘apples’) cannot be addressed properly without a clear understanding of their broader context (the ‘larder’). Whereas previously, a strong societal framework dampened the practical application of the Homo economicus concept (business actors as perfectly rational (...) and egocentric utility‐maximizing agents without any moral concern), specialization, individualization and globalization led to a business world disembedded from broader societal norms. This emancipated business world promotes a literal interpretation of Homo economicus among business organizations and their members. Consequently, we argue that the first step toward ‘healthier’ apples and barrels is to sanitize the larder, that is, adapt the framework in which organizations and their members evolve. (shrink)

The paper uses the example of the failure of bankers and financial managers to understand the risks of dealing in structured financial products, before the financial collapse, to investigate how people respond to crises. It focuses on whether crises cause people to challenge their habitual frames by the application of moral imagination. It is proposed that the structure of financial products and their markets triggered the use of heuristics that contributed to the underestimation of risks. It is further proposed that (...) such framing heuristics are highly specialised to specific contexts and are part of a wider set of heuristics that people carry in their cognitive ‘adaptive toolboxes’. Consequently, it is argued, when a crisis occurs, the heuristics are not challenged, but are simply put away, and other more appropriate heuristics are put to use until a sense of normality returns, and the use of the old heuristics is resumed. (shrink)

Intelligent design advocate William Dembski has introduced a measure of information called “complex specified information”, or CSI. He claims that CSI is a reliable marker of design by intelligent agents. He puts forth a “Law of Conservation of Information” which states that chance and natural laws are incapable of generating CSI. In particular, CSI cannot be generated by evolutionary computation. Dembski asserts that CSI is present in intelligent causes and in the flagellum of Escherichia coli, and concludes that neither have (...) natural explanations. In this paper, we examine Dembski’s claims, point out significant errors in his reasoning, and conclude that there is no reason to accept his assertions. (shrink)

The 1985 paper by Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson, “On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions” was the starting-point of a large and rapidly growing literature that employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. In this review, the first twenty-five years of this development are summarized. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the belief states, change operators not included in the original (...) framework, iterated change, applications of the model, its connections with other formal frameworks, computatibility of AGM operations, and criticism of the model. (shrink)

This paper develops a descriptive and normative account of how people respond to testimony. It postulates a default pathway in which people more or less automatically respond to a claim by accepting it, as long as the claim made is consistent with their beliefs and the source is credible. Otherwise, people enter a reflective pathway in which they evaluate the claim based on its explanatory coherence with everything else they believe. Computer simulations show how explanatory coherence can be maximized in (...) real-life cases, taking into account all the relevant evidence including the credibility of whoever is making a claim. The explanatory-coherence account is more plausible both descriptively and normatively than a Bayesian account. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine a particular substantive theory among others in the set of “revisionist” theories of moral responsibility, namely, Manuel Vargas’ version of the moral influence account of the justification of responsibility- specific practices. Moderate revisionism, which Vargas endorses, advocates a clear distinction between descriptive and normative questions, which enables a naturalistically plausible account of responsibility that does not jeopardize the normative aspect. However, while Vargas provides a useful framework for thinking about revisionism, I argue (...) that despite its initial appeal, an actual revisionist theory does not seem to track as closely as we would like what I call the “meta-theory” of revisionism, viz. what Vargas defines as the features of moderate revisionism. Outlining these differences enables the formulation of observations about 1) the role of revisionist approaches for theorizing about moral responsibility and 2) how revisionism can be integrated with scientifically informed approaches. (shrink)

The 11 articles in this issue explore how people respond to climate change and other global challenges. The articles pursue three broad strands of enquiry that relate to the effects and causes of “skepticism” about climate change, the purely cognitive challenges that are posed by a complex scientific issue, and the ways in which climate change can be communicated to a wider audience. Cognitive science can contribute to understanding people's responses to global challenges in many ways, and it may also (...) contribute to implementing solutions to those problems. (shrink)

The literature on antecedents of corporate social responsibility strategies of firms has been predominately content driven. Informed by the managerial sense-making process perspective, we develop a contingency theoretical framework explaining how political ideology of managers affects the choice of CSR strategy for their firms through their CSR mindset. We also explain to what extent the outcome of this process is shaped by the firm’s internal institutional arrangements and external factors impacting on the firm. We develop and test several hypotheses using (...) data collected from 129 Chinese managers. The results show that managers with a stronger socialist ideology are likely to develop a mindset favouring CSR, which induces the adoption of a proactive CSR strategy. The CSR mindset mediates the link between socialist ideology and CSR strategy. The strength of the relationship between the CSR mindset and the choice of CSR strategy is moderated by customer response to CSR, industry competition, the role of government, and CSR-related managerial incentives. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have reconstructed the relationship between 20th-century economic theory and neuro-psychological research in terms of a three-stage narrative of initial unity, increasing separation, and ongoing reunification. In this article, I draw on major developments in economic theory and neuro-psychological research to provide a descriptive and normative critique of this reconstruction. Moreover, I put forward a reconstruction of the relationship between economics and neuro-psychology that, I claim, better fits both the available empirical evidence and the methodological foundations (...) of these disciplines. In doing so, I argue that recent calls to develop a unified interdisciplinary framework for modeling choice are premised on disputable presuppositions concerning both the domain of economic theory and the relationship between this theory’s axiomatic foundations and empirical findings about the neuro-psychological substrates of choice. (shrink)

The Ramseyan thesis that the probability of an indicative conditional is equal to the corresponding conditional probability of its consequent given its antecedent is both widely confirmed and subject to attested counterexamples (e.g., McGee 2000, Kaufmann 2004). This raises several puzzling questions. For instance, why are there interpretations of conditionals that violate this Ramseyan thesis in certain contexts, and why are they otherwise very rare? In this paper, I raise some challenges to Stefan Kaufmann's account of why the Ramseyan thesis (...) sometimes fails, and motivate my own theory. On my theory, the proposition expressed by an indicative conditional is partially determined by a background partition, and hence its probability depends on the choice of such a partition. I hold that this background partition is contextually determined, and in certain conditions is set by a salient question under discussion in the context. I show how the resulting theory offers compelling answers to the puzzling questions raised by failures of the Ramseyan thesis. (shrink)

Even though tools for identifying and analyzing arguments are now in wide use in the field of argumentation studies, so far there is a paucity of resources for evaluating real arguments, aside from using deductive logic or Bayesian rules that apply to inductive arguments. In this paper it is shown that recent developments in artificial intelligence in the area of computational systems for modeling defeasible argumentation reveal a different approach that is currently making interesting progress. It is shown how these (...) systems provide the general outlines for a system of argument evaluation that can be applied to legal arguments as well as everyday conversational arguments to assist a user to evaluate an argument. (shrink)

‘Epistemic’ arguments for conservatism typically claim that given the limits of human reason, we are better off accepting some particular social practice or institution rather than trying to consciously improve it. I critically examine and defend here one such argument, claiming that there are some domains of social life in which, given the limits of our knowledge and the complexity of the social world, we ought to defer to those institutions that have robustly endured in a wide variety of circumstances (...) in the past while not being correlated with intolerable outcomes. These are domains of social life in which our ignorance of optimal institutions is radical, and there is uncertainty about the costs of error. This is an argument for the preservation of particular institutions, not particular policies or outcomes, and it specifically identifies these with the institutions that John Rawls called ‘the basic structure of society.’ The argument further implies that to the extent that there is any reason to change these institutions, changes should be calculated as far as possible to increase their ‘epistemic power.’. (shrink)

Metaethics, understood as a distinct branch of ethics, is often traced to G. E. Moore's 1903 classic, Principia Ethica. Whereas normative ethics is concerned to answer first order moral questions about what is good and bad, right and wrong, metaethics is concerned to answer second order non-moral questions about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of moral thought and discourse. Moore has continued to exert a powerful influence, and the sixteen essays here represent the most up-to-date work in metaethics after, and (...) in some cases directly inspired by, the work of Moore. (shrink)

The paper aim draws together two ideas that have figured in different strands of discussion in business ethics: the ideas of intuition and of reflection. They are considered in company with the third, complementary, idea of analysis. It is argued that the interplay amongst these is very important in business ethics. The relationship amongst the three ideas can be understood by reference to parts of modern cognitive psychology, including dual-process theory and the Social Intuitionist Model. Intuition can be misleading when (...) based on fast and frugal heuristics, and reasoning needs social exchange if it is to support moral judgment effectively, but in the complex institutional environment of business, reflection and analysis can underpin social communication and feedback to develop sound intuition. Reflection and analysis are both more deliberate, systematic judgment processes than intuition, but are distinguished by the fact that reflection embraces hypothetical thinking and imagination, while analysis is careful, step-by-step reasoning. Examples of business ethics problems illustrate the need for both of these processes, and also suggest how they themselves can be enhanced in the same social exchange process that underpins the development of good intuition. (shrink)

In the rationality debate, Gerd Gigerenzer and his colleagues have argued that human’s apparent inability to follow probabilistic principles does not mean our irrationality, because we can do probabilistic reasoning successfully if probability information is given in frequencies, not percentages (the natural frequency hypothesis). They also offered an evolutionary argument to this hypothesis, according to which using frequencies was evolutionarily more advantageous to our hominin ancestors than using percentages, and this is why we can reason correctly about probabilities in the (...) frequency format. This paper offers a critical review of this evolutionary argument. I show that there are reasons to believe using the frequency format was not more adaptive than using the standard (percentage) format. I also argue that there is a plausible alternative explanation (the nested-sets hypothesis) for the improved test performances of experimental subjects—one of Gigerenzer’s key explananda—which undermines the need to postulate mental mechanisms for probabilistic reasoning tuned to the frequency format. The explanatory thrust of the natural frequency hypothesis is much less significant than its advocates assume. (shrink)

Subjective probability plays an increasingly important role in many fields concerned with human cognition and behavior. Yet there have been significant criticisms of the idea that probabilities could actually be represented in the mind. This paper presents and elaborates a view of subjective probability as a kind of sampling propensity associated with internally represented generative models. The resulting view answers to some of the most well known criticisms of subjective probability, and is also supported by empirical work in neuroscience and (...) behavioral psychology. The repercussions of the view for how we conceive of many ordinary instances of subjective probability, and how it relates to more traditional conceptions of subjective probability, are discussed in some detail. (shrink)

Adaptive rationality theorists question the manner in which psychologists have typically assessed rational behavior and cognition. According to them, human rationality is adaptive, and the biases reported in the psychological literature are best seen as the result of using normative standards that are too narrow. As it turns out, their challenge is also quite controversial, and several aspects of it have been called into question. Yet, whilst it is often suggested that the lack of cogency comes about due to the (...) implausibility of the alternative normative framework, in this paper I articulate a different strategy to resist the revolutionary rhetoric of AR. As I argue here, even if we accept the normative framework of AR, the challenge from AR is less damaging than usually accepted. In particular, I challenge the claim that biases reported in the literature should be conceived of as violations of axiomatic rationality. I argue that the category of bias refers instead to a range of heterogeneous phenomena and that, since several important families of biases are not just violations of axiomatic rationality, these are not vulnerable to the AR challenge. In fact, I also show that the families I consider here look like plausible cases of irrational behavior from the perspective of AR, and that the outcome of my analysis does not sit well with AR theorists’ claim that people are generally successful at achieving prudential and epistemic goals. (shrink)

Oocyte donation raises conflicts of interest and commitment for physicians but little attention has been paid to how to reduce these conflicts in practice. Yet the growing popularity of assisted reproduction has increased the stakes of maintaining an adequate oocyte supply and minimizing conflicts. A growing body of professional guidelines, legal challenges to professional self-regulation, and empirical research on the practice of oocyte donation all call for renewed attention to the issue. As empirical findings better inform existing conflicts and their (...) potential harms, we can better attempt to reduce these conflicts. To that end, the article first describes the nature of conflicts in oocyte donation and relevant regulations and professional guidelines. We then describe studies on conflicts at four phases of oocyte donation: recruitment, screening, stimulation, and post-stimulation monitoring. Next we consider three models for conflict reduction in medicine generally: improved professional self-regulation, outright restriction like Stark anti-referral laws, or the use of conflict mediators, like in living organ donation. We ultimately conclude that improved professional self-regulation is a reasonable starting place for oocyte donation. (shrink)

Research on “improper” linear models has shown that predetermined weighting schemes for the linear model, such as equally weighting all predictors, can be surprisingly accurate on cross-validation. We review recent advances that can characterize the optimal choice of an improper linear model. We extend this research to the understanding of fast and frugal heuristics, particularly to the ecologically rational goal of understanding in which task environments given heuristics are optimal. We demonstrate how to test this model using the Recognition Heuristic (...) and Take the Best heuristic, show how the model reconciles with the ecological rationality program, and discuss how our prescriptive, computational approach could be approximated by simpler mental rules that might be more descriptive. Echoing the arguments of van Rooij et al., we stress the virtue of having a computationally tractable model of strategy selection, even if one proposes that cognizers use a simpler heuristic process to approximate it. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relation of heuristic search and level of intelligence in cognitive computation systems. The paper begins with a review of the fundamental properties of a cognitive computation system, which is defined generally as a control system that generates goal-directed actions in response to environmental inputs and constraints. An important property of cognitive computations is the need to process local cues in symbol structures to access and integrate distal knowledge to generate a response. To deal with uncertainties (...) involved in this local-to-distal processing, the system needs to perform heuristic search to locate and integrate the right set of distal structures. The level of intelligence of the system depends critically on the efficiency of the heuristic search process. It is argued that, for a bounded rationality system, the level of intelligence does not depend on how much search it needs to do to accomplish a task. Rather, the level of intelligence depends on how much search it does not need to do to achieve the same level of performance. Examples were discussed to illustrate this idea. The first two examples show how machines that play games like tic-tac-toe and chess rely heavily on the efficiency of the heuristic search algorithm to achieve better performance, demonstrating the relation of heuristic search and intelligence in a bounded rationality system. The second example shows how humans adapt to different information ecologies to perform information search on the Internet and how their performance improves over time, demonstrating how heuristic search can be improved in an adaptive rationality system. The two examples demonstrate how better search control knowledge and representations of task environment can improve the efficiency of heuristic search, thereby improving the intelligence of the system. (shrink)

A cursory glance at the list of Nobel Laureates for Economics is sufficient to confirm Stanovich’s description of the project to evaluate human rationality as seminal. Herbert Simon, Reinhard Selten, John Nash, Daniel Kahneman, and others, were awarded their prizes less for their work in economics, per se, than for their work on rationality, as such. Although philosophical works have for millennia attempted to describe, explicate and evaluate individual and collective aspects of rationality, new impetus was brought to this endeavor (...) over the last century as mathematical logic along with the social and behavioral sciences emerged. Yet more recently, over the last several decades, propelled by the emergence of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, and related fields, even more sophisticated approaches to the study of rationality have emerged. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)