Heuristics and Biases: Individual Differences in Reasoning: Implications for the Rationality Debate?

Much research in the last 2 decades has demonstrated that humans deviate from normative models of decision making and rational judgment. In 4 studies involving 954 participants, the authors explored the extent to which measures of cognitive ability and thinking dispositions can predict discrepancies from normative responding on a variety of tasks from the heuristics and biases literature including the selection task, belief bias in syllogistic reasoning, argument evaluation, base-rate use, covariation detection, hypothesis testing, outcome bias, if-only thinking, knowledge calibration, hindsight bias, and the false consensus paradigm. Significant relationships involving cognitive ability were interpreted as indicating algorithmic-level limitations on the computation of the normative response. Relationships with thinking dispositions were interpreted as indicating that styles of epistemic regulation can predict

http://www.keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning_files/Stanovich-Ind-Dif-JEPG98.pdf

Individual differences in rational thought.

The pragmatic character of the Dutch book argument makes it unsuitable as an "epistemic" justification for the fundamental probabilist dogma that rational partial beliefs must conform to the axioms of probability. To secure an appropriately epistemic justification for this conclusion, one must explain what it means for a system of partial beliefs to accurately represent the state of the world, and then show that partial beliefs that violate the laws of probability are invariably less accurate than they could be otherwise. The first task can be accomplished once we realize that the accuracy of systems of partial beliefs can be measured on a gradational scale that satisfies a small set of formal constraints, each of which has a sound epistemic motivation. When accuracy is measured in this way it can be shown that any system of degrees of belief that violates the axioms of probability can be replaced by an alternative system that obeys the axioms and yet is more accurate in every possible world. Since epistemically rational agents must strive to hold accurate beliefs, this establishes conformity with the axioms of probability as a norm of epistemic rationality whatever its prudential merits or defects might be.

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A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism

My aim in this paper is to explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality. By epistemic rationality, I mean, roughly, the kind of rationality which one displays when one believes propositions that are strongly supported by one's evidence and refrains from believing propositions that are improbable given one's evidence. Prominent epistemologists frequently emphasize the disparate ways in which this term is employed and occasionally question its theoretical usefulness on this account.' With an eye towards such concerns, I will in what follows consider only examples in which the correctness of its application is more or less uncontroversial. Thus, if I have strong, undefeated evidence that the butler committed the crime, and my belief that the butler committed the crime is based on that evidence, then my belief that he did so is epistemically rational. By instrumental rationality, I mean the rationality which one displays in taking the means to one's ends. Thus, if I have the goal of asking the speaker a question, and I know that I will only be able to ask the speaker a question if I raise my hand, then (all else being equal) it is instrumentally rational for me to raise my hand. How are epistemic and instrumental rationality related? Here is a particularly radical suggestion: epistemic rationality jusr is instrumental rationality. More precisely: epistemic rationality is a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. Call this way of thinking about epistemic rationality the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality. My primary concem in this paper is to explore the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rational' Plantinga (1993) distinguishes five 'varieties' of rationality; Goldman (1986) explicitly

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Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique

I.—other minds (i.)

Well, someone can decide by themselves what they want to do and need to do but sometimes, that kind of person will need some the theory of epistemic rationality references. People with open minded will always try to seek for the new things and information from many sources. On the contrary, people with closed mind will always think that they can do it by their principals. So, what kind of person are you?

James Somerville

Papers

The Theory of Epistemic Rationality

Reid's Conception of Common Sense

Collingwood's Logic of Question and Answer

Kantian Aesthetics Pursued

Kant's Aesthetic Theory. An Introduction