Rationality and the Psychology of Inference

In Ralf Heimrath & Arndt Kremer (eds.) Insularity: Small Worlds in Linguistic and Cultural Perspectives., 2015

Scientific research is by definition anchored towards the discovery of truth and by extension the improvement of our knowledge about the natural world. Even though interdisciplinarity is generally considered to be beneficial in this respect, it is often resisted on the grounds that it can be disruptive to progress within a field. This effectively renders scientific theorising insular, depriving small scientific communities of the chance to move beyond their methodological boundaries. In this paper, I attempt to provide a naturalistic explanation of why researchers are prone to find unfamiliar territory hostile, using arguments from relevance theory and the argumentative theory of reasoning.

Topoi, 2013

7 Abstract Reasoning, defined as the production and 8 evaluation of reasons, is a central process in science. The 9 dominant view of reasoning, both in the psychology of 10 reasoning and in the psychology of science, is of a mech-11 anism with an asocial function: bettering the beliefs of the 12 lone reasoner. Many observations, however, are difficult to 13 reconcile with this view of reasoning; in particular, rea-14 soning systematically searches for reasons that support the 15 reasoner's initial beliefs, and it only evaluates these reasons 16 cursorily. By contrast, reasoners are well able to evaluate 17 others' reasons: accepting strong arguments and rejecting 18 weak ones. The argumentative theory of reasoning 19 accounts for these traits of reasoning by postulating that the 20 evolved function of reasoning is to argue: to find arguments 21 to convince others and to change one's mind when con-22 fronted with good arguments. Scientific reasoning, how-23 ever, is often described as being at odds with such an 24 argumentative mechanisms: scientists are supposed to 25 reason objectively on their own, and to be pigheaded when 26 their theories are challenged, even by good arguments. In 27 this article, we review evidence showing that scientists, 28 when reasoning, are subject to the same biases as are lay 29 people while being able to change their mind when con-30 fronted with good arguments. We conclude that the argu-31 mentative theory of reasoning explains well key features of 32 scientists' reasoning and that differences in the way 33 scientists and laypeople reason result from the institutional 34 framework of science. 35 36 Journal : Large 11245 Dispatch : 21-10-2013 Pages : 12 Article No. : 9217 h LE h TYPESET MS Code : h CP h DISK 4 4 R E V I S E D P R O O F 56 with the thinking of the lone scientist. Scientists might 57 have inherited the problem they deal with from others; they 58 might have social interests; but ultimately it is through 59 reasoning, with its power to uncover the truth, that scien-60 tists devise new theories. Yet the dichotomy that separates, 61 on the one hand, the social and the contextual phenomena 62 and, on the other hand, the individual and epistemic facts, 63 has long been decried (Bloor 1976). Decades of sociology 64 of science have shown that science is an enterprise that 65 involves social interactions in non-trivial ways: the distri-66 bution of labor (e.g. Giere 2002), the historical construction 67 of epistemic standards (e.g. Knorr Cetina 1991), and the 68 collective assessment of theories (e.g. Latour 1993) are 69 cases in point. But reasoning remains the last and most 70 important bastion of individualism in epistemology and 71 science studies. 2 When we assert that the function of rea-72 soning is argumentative, we give to social interactions a 73 key role in reasoning. Reasoning is something that happens 74 in the individual mind, yet, it is a cognitive ability that is 75 geared for dealing with social interactions. How does 76 reasoning's argumentative function play out in the context 77 of science? And what are the consequences for science, its 78 practices, its institutions, and its epistemic status? 79

Philosophy in Review, 2015

Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content embodied in the concepts contained in the premisses and conclusion. Understanding scientific reasoning as material inference has the advantage of combining different aspects of scientific reasoning, such as confirmation, discovery, and explanation. This approach explains why these different aspects (including discovery) can be rational without conforming to formal schemes, and why scientific reasoning is local, i.e., justified only in certain domains and contingent on particular empirical facts. The notion of material inference also fruitfully interacts with accounts of conceptual change and psychological theories of concepts.

Synthese, 1994

The Nature of Scientific Thinking: On Interpretation, Explanation, and Understanding is a noble effort to remedy much of the neglect within philosophy of science that pertains to context and pragmatics. The book, as the title indicates, is wide-ranging in scope, but Faye provides a thorough and detailed analysis of that subject matter that combines fair criticism of current philosophical stances with insightful emendations and suggestions to those stances. At the heart of the manuscript is Faye’s pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanation that primarily functions as a general theme that informs the arguments for most of the book. The text systematically moves from the general concepts of understanding and interpretation into specific issues of explanation before culminating with Faye’s pragmatic-rhetorical theory and his pluralistic picture of the sciences.

Philosophy of Science, 1999

American Psychologist, 2007

Scientific thought' is regarded here as both a type of goal-directed behaviour (practice) and its product, and the question of its 'nature' posed in terms of that goal and of means appropriate for achieving it, preferably with regard to an existing paradigm (exemplar) such as the 'Galilean-Newtonian'. 'Empiricism', a widely received view of the nature of science, is examined and rejected, as is the general idea that scientific thought has 'philosophical foundations'. The question of the actual or possible scientific status of 'the human sciences' is raised and some methodological guidelines for an answer to it suggested.