Evans J S, Over D E, Manktelow K I
Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK.
Cognition. 1993 Oct-Nov;49(1-2):165-87. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(93)90039-x.
It is argued that reasoning in the real world supports decision making and is aimed at the achievement of goals. A distinction is developed between two notions of rationality: rationality which is reasoning in such a way as to achieve one's goals--within cognitive constraints--and rationality which is reasoning by a process of logic. This dichotomy is related to the philosophical distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. It is argued that logicality (rationality) does not provide a good basis for rationality and some psychological research on deductive reasoning is re-examined in this light. First, we review belief bias effects in syllogistic reasoning, and argue that the phenomena do not support the interpretations of irrationality that are often placed upon them. Second, we review and discuss recent studies of deontic reasoning in the Wason selection task, which demonstrate the decision making, and rational nature of reasoning in realistic contexts. The final section of the paper examines contemporary decision theory and shows how it fails, in comparable manner to formal logic, to provide an adequate model for assessing the rationality of human reasoning and decision making.
有人认为，现实世界中的推理有助于决策制定，其目的是实现目标。文章对两种理性概念进行了区分：一种理性是在认知限制范围内以实现个人目标的方式进行推理；另一种理性是通过逻辑过程进行推理。这种二分法与实践推理和理论推理之间的哲学区分相关。有人认为逻辑性（理性）并不能为合理性提供良好的基础，并据此重新审视了一些关于演绎推理的心理学研究。首先，我们回顾了三段论推理中的信念偏差效应，并认为这些现象并不支持人们通常对其作出的非理性解释。其次，我们回顾并讨论了最近在沃森选择任务中关于道义推理的研究，这些研究证明了现实情境中推理的决策制定和理性本质。本文的最后一部分考察了当代决策理论，并表明它与形式逻辑一样，未能提供一个充分的模型来评估人类推理和决策的合理性。
