Elqayam & Evans (E&E) advise us to jettison the normative element in theoretical psychological investigations. To follow their advice, though, we need to know just what it is we are to jettison. There are two crucial areas of unclarity in their presentation of normativism. The first can simply be disambiguated, but the second indicates a deeper problem with their project.
First, some of their formulations of normativism involve a formal system (as in their Abstract: “human thinking reflects a normative system against which it should be measured and judged”). Elsewhere in the target article, normativism involves an appeal to something that is “a priori,” “unconditional,” or “universal.” But at other points, systems drop out, and all that is involved is a particular kind of “oughtness”; and indeed, at other points in the text, merely an appeal to rightness and wrongness, or “error” is deemed sufficient to count as normativist. It is dangerous to elide the difference between the notion of formal or a priori systems, and evaluative normativity itself, for there are evaluative normative theories that traffic in oughtness, but not on the basis of any such formal or a priori principles; epistemic reliabilism, for example (Goldman Reference Goldman and Pappas1979; Kornblith Reference Kornblith2003), and, as I will argue in a moment, the ecological rationality of Gigerenzer, Todd, and others. Some disambiguations are therefore in order.
E&E's arguments mostly aim at universality (e.g., the “arbitration problem”) and the is-ought/ought-is inferences. So let's tease a apart several different sub-claims of their anti-normativism that might be at issue:
-
(Humeanism) We should not make any hasty inferences from “is” to “ought,” or vice versa.
-
(Anti-Universalism) There is no unique correct evaluative normative framework applicable to all persons and situations.
-
(Descriptivism) We should not make any substantive (as opposed to merely “inspirational”) inclusion of evaluative normativity as a part of our psychological theorizing.
The authors' arguments for the first two anti-normativisms are generally well-taken (see also, Weinberg Reference Weinberg2007). But in some places they are perhaps over-zealous. For example, there are surely other explanations available for the focus on naive as opposed to trained subjects, on the very plausible presupposition that only a small portion of the population receives any such training; and so what we learn from studying such subjects may not generalize well. And, for that matter, expert reasoning populations have long been studied as well, as with Herbert Simon's highly influential research. Also, the authors' discussion of Humeanism could perhaps be more sensitive to a minor quandary they put themselves in: Having rejected a priorist approaches to the question of evaluative normativity, they either have to endorse some “is” facts as evidence for “ought” facts, or end up as full-blown skeptics about such normativity.
Disentangling Descriptivism from Humeanism and Anti-Universalism, however, does not yet render it clear, for “evaluative normativity” itself needs further clarification. One worry is that E&E have not actually succeeded in identifying a distinct form of normativity that can be cleanly set aside. They distinguish it initially from instrumental, bounded, ecological, and evolutionary forms of normativity, which they find unproblematically descriptive in nature. But they are too hasty in assimilating ecological normativity, for psychologists in that school seem to traffic in forms of correctness that cannot be boiled down to “Darwinian and Skinnerian algorithms.” Ecologists' writings are rife with discussions of a “fit” between environment and mind, and of “success” or simply “good reasoning” that is neither constituted by (even if perhaps highly correlated with) the satisfaction of specific desires of individuals nor grounded in any appeal to what has historically promoted, or would today promote, reproductive fitness. One way of seeing how ecological normativity cannot be explicated in terms of instrumental normativity, is that the former is very often analyzed in terms of the relationship between a heuristic and an environment, without reference to any (even hypothetical) desires of some agent (see Over Reference Over2000). So, although E&E place ecologists in the “low normativism” zone, this is due to the ecologists' conflating evaluative normativity itself with the use of normative systems; ecological rationality eschews the latter, but is robustly committed to the former. This also explains the difficulty E&E have with those researchers apparently deploying “oughtness” more than their location in the “low normativism” zone would expect.
E&E also go on later to invoke yet another form of allegedly unproblematic normativity, “epistemic rationality, in the sense of holding well-calibrated beliefs” (sect. 5.2, para. 4). But such calibration is not an unevaluative notion. Indeed, the logicists or Bayesians could easily claim that such normativity is exactly what they themselves are theorizing in terms of. For example, the reason, according to logicists, why you should not affirm the consequent is that it will generally lead you to believe falsehoods. The reason, according to the likes of Kahneman and Tversky, why heuristics tend to lead to biases is that they leave us susceptible to various forms of false beliefs.
There is a fundamental problem here: The sort of normativity that E&E want to set aside is simply too tightly wound around our psychological theorizing to be disentangled and discarded. That the authors find themselves writing in terms of instrumental rationality where agents and goals drop out of consideration altogether, and of the same epistemic rationality that their opponents would embrace, suggests that they are just as deeply enmeshed in evaluative normativity as everyone else, if in an unintentionally cryptic way. The authors are concerned that normative thinking has a too powerful, “biasing” influence on scientists' minds. That very fact, however, suggests that trying to get scientists to swear off of normative thinking altogether may be simply impossible. Trying to do without it may only result in such thinking being performed in subterranean ways, leading to violations of both Humeanism and Anti-Universalism. Wiser instead to regiment normative thinking. A methodological norm wherein researchers identify and articulate their evaluative commitments would put normativity out in the open, to be debated where fruitful, ignored where not, and allow for compensation for any biases. Where abstinence is unrealistic and perhaps even undesirable, we are better off adopting instead a norm of full disclosure.
You have
Access
Elqayam & Evans (E&E) advise us to jettison the normative element in theoretical psychological investigations. To follow their advice, though, we need to know just what it is we are to jettison. There are two crucial areas of unclarity in their presentation of normativism. The first can simply be disambiguated, but the second indicates a deeper problem with their project.
First, some of their formulations of normativism involve a formal system (as in their Abstract: “human thinking reflects a normative system against which it should be measured and judged”). Elsewhere in the target article, normativism involves an appeal to something that is “a priori,” “unconditional,” or “universal.” But at other points, systems drop out, and all that is involved is a particular kind of “oughtness”; and indeed, at other points in the text, merely an appeal to rightness and wrongness, or “error” is deemed sufficient to count as normativist. It is dangerous to elide the difference between the notion of formal or a priori systems, and evaluative normativity itself, for there are evaluative normative theories that traffic in oughtness, but not on the basis of any such formal or a priori principles; epistemic reliabilism, for example (Goldman Reference Goldman and Pappas1979; Kornblith Reference Kornblith2003), and, as I will argue in a moment, the ecological rationality of Gigerenzer, Todd, and others. Some disambiguations are therefore in order.
E&E's arguments mostly aim at universality (e.g., the “arbitration problem”) and the is-ought/ought-is inferences. So let's tease a apart several different sub-claims of their anti-normativism that might be at issue:
(Humeanism) We should not make any hasty inferences from “is” to “ought,” or vice versa.
(Anti-Universalism) There is no unique correct evaluative normative framework applicable to all persons and situations.
(Descriptivism) We should not make any substantive (as opposed to merely “inspirational”) inclusion of evaluative normativity as a part of our psychological theorizing.
The authors' arguments for the first two anti-normativisms are generally well-taken (see also, Weinberg Reference Weinberg2007). But in some places they are perhaps over-zealous. For example, there are surely other explanations available for the focus on naive as opposed to trained subjects, on the very plausible presupposition that only a small portion of the population receives any such training; and so what we learn from studying such subjects may not generalize well. And, for that matter, expert reasoning populations have long been studied as well, as with Herbert Simon's highly influential research. Also, the authors' discussion of Humeanism could perhaps be more sensitive to a minor quandary they put themselves in: Having rejected a priorist approaches to the question of evaluative normativity, they either have to endorse some “is” facts as evidence for “ought” facts, or end up as full-blown skeptics about such normativity.
Disentangling Descriptivism from Humeanism and Anti-Universalism, however, does not yet render it clear, for “evaluative normativity” itself needs further clarification. One worry is that E&E have not actually succeeded in identifying a distinct form of normativity that can be cleanly set aside. They distinguish it initially from instrumental, bounded, ecological, and evolutionary forms of normativity, which they find unproblematically descriptive in nature. But they are too hasty in assimilating ecological normativity, for psychologists in that school seem to traffic in forms of correctness that cannot be boiled down to “Darwinian and Skinnerian algorithms.” Ecologists' writings are rife with discussions of a “fit” between environment and mind, and of “success” or simply “good reasoning” that is neither constituted by (even if perhaps highly correlated with) the satisfaction of specific desires of individuals nor grounded in any appeal to what has historically promoted, or would today promote, reproductive fitness. One way of seeing how ecological normativity cannot be explicated in terms of instrumental normativity, is that the former is very often analyzed in terms of the relationship between a heuristic and an environment, without reference to any (even hypothetical) desires of some agent (see Over Reference Over2000). So, although E&E place ecologists in the “low normativism” zone, this is due to the ecologists' conflating evaluative normativity itself with the use of normative systems; ecological rationality eschews the latter, but is robustly committed to the former. This also explains the difficulty E&E have with those researchers apparently deploying “oughtness” more than their location in the “low normativism” zone would expect.
E&E also go on later to invoke yet another form of allegedly unproblematic normativity, “epistemic rationality, in the sense of holding well-calibrated beliefs” (sect. 5.2, para. 4). But such calibration is not an unevaluative notion. Indeed, the logicists or Bayesians could easily claim that such normativity is exactly what they themselves are theorizing in terms of. For example, the reason, according to logicists, why you should not affirm the consequent is that it will generally lead you to believe falsehoods. The reason, according to the likes of Kahneman and Tversky, why heuristics tend to lead to biases is that they leave us susceptible to various forms of false beliefs.
There is a fundamental problem here: The sort of normativity that E&E want to set aside is simply too tightly wound around our psychological theorizing to be disentangled and discarded. That the authors find themselves writing in terms of instrumental rationality where agents and goals drop out of consideration altogether, and of the same epistemic rationality that their opponents would embrace, suggests that they are just as deeply enmeshed in evaluative normativity as everyone else, if in an unintentionally cryptic way. The authors are concerned that normative thinking has a too powerful, “biasing” influence on scientists' minds. That very fact, however, suggests that trying to get scientists to swear off of normative thinking altogether may be simply impossible. Trying to do without it may only result in such thinking being performed in subterranean ways, leading to violations of both Humeanism and Anti-Universalism. Wiser instead to regiment normative thinking. A methodological norm wherein researchers identify and articulate their evaluative commitments would put normativity out in the open, to be debated where fruitful, ignored where not, and allow for compensation for any biases. Where abstinence is unrealistic and perhaps even undesirable, we are better off adopting instead a norm of full disclosure.