In search for a standard of rationality

摘要

The debate on human rationality goes to the heart of fundamental questions about human existence. When can we say that a decision is correct? What is the basis for the achievements of the human intellect? What is the most important cognitive distinction between humans and non-human organisms? Proposals of rationality have an interesting status as psychological theories. They are not quite theories of decision making in practice—such theories are referred to as descriptive theories, to imply that they describe what goes on. Rather, proposals of rationality are normative theories, to imply theories of how people ought to reason, if they seek decision outcomes, which are deemed to be correct, on the basis of some absolute standard (here, we are simplifying a complex debate; arguments have been expressed against a distinction between normative and descriptive rationality as we make above, e.g., Elqayam and Evans, 2011, 2013). Of course, a normative theory must be partly a descriptive theory as well, since it is assumed that humans can, in principle, sometimes, reason on the basis of the normative prescription (they may just not do so, in typical situations, perhaps due to process demands or time or other constraints).