#Supermind book pdf series#

Worse still, it is unclear how we might test dual-process theories. Although dual-process theorists have typically argued for their position by way of an inference to the best explanation, they have generally failed to consider alternative hypotheses. If human reasoning is so divided, it would have important consequences for morality, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. In order to explain the effects found in the heuristics and biases literature, dual-process theories of reasoning claim that human reasoning is of two kinds: Type-1 processing is fast, automatic, and associative, while Type-2 reasoning is slow, controlled, and rule based.

Since the philosophers who belong to the first group claim that the cases of self and other are essentially symmetrical, their theory can be called the symmetry theory, while their opponents' theory can be called the asymmetry theory (Schwitzgebel 2014).

Philosophers who participate in this debate can roughly be divided into two groups: those who claim that one knows one's own propositional attitudes by turning one's capacity to know others' propositional attitudes onto oneself (Ryle 1949, Gopnik 1993, Carruthers 2011, Cassam 2014, and those who claim that one knows one's own propositional attitudes by some other means by which one can only know one's own propositional attitudes but not others' propositional attitudes (Moran 2001, Nichols & Stich 2003, Bar-On 2004, Frankish 2004, Bilgrami 2006, Goldman 2006, O'Brien 2007, Fernández 2013, Proust 2013, Coliva 2016, Byrne, A. A question that receives special attention is how one knows one's own propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, as well as judgements, and decisions. When such agents do not form or revise their intentions in light of what they all-out believe, they need not be irrational if they do not conform to these requirements. Rational agents like us, however, do not, and in fact should not, always form or revise their intentions in light of what they all-out believe. The reason for this is simple: these requirements concern the presence or absence of intention in light of all-out belief.

#Supermind book pdf series#

In this paper, I present a series of examples that show that these requirements are not genuine requirements of rationality. Examples of such norms (all roughly formulated) include: Intention Detachment, which proscribes intending to do something in case some condition obtains, believing that such condition obtains, and not intending to do that thing Intention-Belief Consistency, which proscribes intending to do what you believe you will not do Intention Consistency, which proscribes intending each of two ends you believe to be inconsistent and Means-End Coherence, which proscribes intending an end and not intending the means you believe to be implied by your end.

Much work in the philosophy of action in the last few decades has focused on the elucidation and justification of a series of purported norms of practical rationality that concern the presence or absence of intention in light of belief, and that demand a kind of structural coherence in the psychology of an agent.