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Scientific Rationality and Human Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Miriam Solomon
Miriam Solomon*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Temple University
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Abstract

The work of Tversky, Kahneman and others suggests that people often make use of cognitive heuristics such as availability, salience and representativeness in their reasoning and decision making. Through use of a historical example—the recent plate tectonics revolution in geology—I argue that such heuristics play a crucial role in scientific decision making also. I suggest how these heuristics are to be considered, along with noncognitive factors (such as motivation and social structures) when drawing historical and epistemological conclusions. The normative perspective is community-wide, contextual, and instrumental.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1992, pp. 439 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Jonathan Adler, Jonathan Baron, Gilbert Harman, Gary Hatfield, Philip Kitcher, Hilary Kornblith, Ted Morris, Nick Pappas, Georges Rey, Bob Richardson, Marya Schechtman, Paul Thagard, Joan Weiner and an anonymous referee for Philosophy of Science for discussions of this material. Work on this paper was supported by a Taft Summer Faculty Fellowship, University of Cincinnati, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania. A version of this paper was presented at a symposium on Naturalized Philosophy of Science at the APA Pacific Division Meetings, March 1991.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Building 022-32, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.

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