Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of JudgmentWhat happens when we think? How do people make judgments? While different theories abound—and are heatedly debated—most are based on an algorithmic model of how the brain works. Howard Margolis builds a fascinating case for a theory that thinking is based on recognizing patterns and that this process is intrinsically a-logical. Margolis gives a Darwinian account of how pattern recognition evolved to reach human cognitive abilities. Illusions of judgment—standard anomalies where people consistently misjudge or misperceive what is logically implied or really present—are often used in cognitive science to explore the workings of the cognitive process. The explanations given for these anomalous results have generally explained only the anomaly under study and nothing more. Margolis provides a provocative and systematic analysis of these illusions, which explains why such anomalies exist and recur. Offering empirical applications of his theory, Margolis turns to historical cases to show how an individual's cognitive repertoire—the available cognitive patterns and their relation to cues—changes or resists changes over time. Here he focuses on the change in worldview occasioned by the Copernican discovery: not only how an individual might come to see things in a radically new way, but how it is possible for that new view to spread and become the dominant one. A reanalysis of the trial of Galileo focuses on social cognition and its interactions with politics. In challenging the prevailing paradigm for understanding how the human mind works, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition is certain to stimulate fruitful debate. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Illusions | 9 |
Two Preliminary Arguments | 25 |
A Cognitive Ladder | 42 |
PCognition | 63 |
Knowledge Belief Logic | 87 |
Learning Level 1 | 112 |
Learning Level 2 | 124 |
The Darwinian Discovery | 188 |
The Copernican Issues | 198 |
The Copernican Discovery | 224 |
The Copernican Contagion | 250 |
Political Judgment Galileo and the Pope | 274 |
Notes | 303 |
Literature Cited | 319 |
| 325 | |
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ambiguity analysis Aristarchus Aristotle become belief brain capability cards Chapter checking choice cognitive comet Commentariolus competent conscious contagion context Coperni Copernican argument Copernican system Copernicus creature cued cues Darwin Darwinian deeply entrenched detail discovery earth effect epicycles equant essential evolution example expect experience explicit familiar figure formal logic Galileo gestalt golden chain habits of mind heliocentric hence human idea illusions inference insight intuition judgment Kahneman Kepler Kuhnian language learning look mathematical ment modus tollens moon motion move natural selection nested-sphere neurons neurophysiology oecumene orbit ordinarily P-cognitive argument particular pattern pattern-recognition person planets plausible pope problem prompted Ptol Ptolemaic astronomer Ptolemaic system Ptolemy's puzzle radical reasoning reasoning-why repertoire response role Saturn scenario scheme seeing-that seems seen sense sequence situation sketched somehow sort step structure subjects suppose things tion tuning turn Tychonic system Venus versus Wason wrong