Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations
Synthese 187 (2):471-487 (2012)
| Abstract | Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity φ is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative. | |||||||||
| Keywords | psychological explanation computational-level theory computational complexity intractability approximation algorithm NP-hard heuristics function cognitive science | |||||||||
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