Читать книгу Philosophy of Psychology - Lisa Bortolotti - Страница 41

 The standard picture of rationality claims that rationality consists in reasoning in accordance with the rules of logic, probability, and decision-making. However, studies of reasoning errors and biases, in particular the ones in the heuristics and biases programme, reveal that we systematically fail to reason in accordance with the rules of logic, probability, and decision-making. Thus, if we adopt the standard picture and take the results of the empirical studies at face value, we draw the pessimistic conclusion that humans are irrational.

 There are three main objections from optimists, most notably Gigerenzer: (1) according to the feasibility objection, the standard picture fails to take relevant constraints into account; (2) according to the meaninglessness objection, the results of the reasoning studies should be dismissed, in particular the probabilistic ones, because they involve meaningless questions about the probability of single events; and (3) according to the ecological rationality objection, we should replace the standard picture with the ecological picture, which evaluates human cognition not in terms of logical and mathematical rules but rather in terms of biological success in the relevant environment. None of these objections, however, convincingly refutes the pessimistic interpretation of the experimental results.

 The standard picture is related to the idea that the aim of cognition is tracking truth. This idea has some plausibility, but there are some interesting cases, such as the case of positive illusions, in which beliefs seem to have a function that is distinct from tracking truth.