Rationality and the psychology of inference
Synthese 57 (November):129-138 (1983)
| Abstract | Recent advances in the cognitive psychology of inference have been of great interest to philosophers of science. The present paper reviews one such area, namely studies based upon Wason's 4-card selection task. It is argued that interpretation of the results of the experiments is complex, because a variety of inference strategies may be used by subjects to select evidence needed to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Empirical evidence suggests that which strategy is used depends in part on the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic context of the inference problem at hand. Since the factors of importance are also present in real-world science, and similarly complicate its interpretation, the selection task, though it does not present a quick fix, represents a kind of microcosm of great utility for the understanding of science. Several studies which have examined selection strategies in more complex problem-solving environments are also reviewed, in an attempt to determine the limits of generalizability of the simpler selection tasks. Certain interpretational misuses of laboratory research are described, and a claim made that the issue of whether or not scientists are rational should be approached by philosophers and psychologists with appropriate respect for the complexities of the issue | |||||||||
| Keywords | Inference Psychology Rationality Science | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesPeter Lipton (2004). Inference to the Best Explanation. Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.
Harold Kincaid (2000). Formal Rationality and its Pernicious Effects on the Social Sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (1):67-88.
Alex Viskovatoff (2001). Rationality as Optimal Choice Versus Rationality as Valid Inference. Journal of Economic Methodology 8 (2):313-337.
Mitch Parsell (2005). Context-Sensitive Inference, Modularity, and the Assumption of Formal Processing. Philosophical Psychology 18 (1):45-58.
Frederick Eberhardt & David Danks (2011). Confirmation in the Cognitive Sciences: The Problematic Case of Bayesian Models. Minds and Machines 21 (3):389-410.
Zoltan Dienes (2008). Understanding Psychology as a Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Statistical Inference. Palgrave Macmillan.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads11 ( #99,611 of 549,198 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,418 of 549,198 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
