The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
| Date: 15 April 2011, 13:17
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Philosophy and psychology offer very different contributions to human knowledge, due in part to their different strategies for arriving at the truth but also due to the extent to which they are accepting of scientific facts and theories. Philosophers like to believe that their opinions, argumentation, and writings are more fundamental than scientific theories and serve as a "foundation" for the latter. Psychology on the other hand is usually more empirical, but still does not hesitate to build models, many of them abstract and sometimes seeming far removed from the (mental) phenomena they are supposed to represent. But since psychology does at times have some contact with laboratory experiments, it can be said to be closer to science than philosophy is. Only a tiny minority of those who profess to be philosophers would make any efforts in the laboratory experiments.
This distinction between philosophy and psychology can sometimes fade if one investigates their account of human reasoning which is well-represented in the articles that are included in this book. Covering a wide range of opinions on the nature and functioning of human thought, readers will no doubt be selective as to what articles they actually go over in detail. This was the case for this reviewer, who was primarily interested in the articles that make a connection with cognitive neuroscience. It is the latter field that is making contact with both philosophers and psychologists, and both parties have found themselves deeply involved in debates over topics such as the "modularity" of mind and the sometimes bitter disputes over the independence of neuronal synapses and cognition.
Philosophers of mind usually build elaborate theories based on sophisticated rhetoric in order have a framework to "justify" or criticize human reasoning abilities, and some psychologists construct "mental models" of the same. But if these systems of rhetoric or models are to be helpful to the cognitive neuroscientist, there has to be a way to test them experimentally. This has been very difficult until the advent of magnetic resonance imaging, and the article "Cognitive Neuroscience of Deductive Reasoning" by V. Goel in this book gives an excellent overview of the experiments that have used this technique to study deductive reasoning patterns. Early on in the article he outlines what he says are the two most popular psychological theories of deductive reasoning: the "mental logic" and "mental model" theories. He also mentions another, the "dual mechanism" theory that has been recently proposed. Goel then outlines the brain experiments that have been conducted that will verify (falsify) these theories and the discussion is very illuminating. It is very exciting indeed that the ancient syllogisms of Plato and Aristotle are now being explained by brain science, especially the identification of the areas of the brain that are responsible for analyzing the "validity" of logical arguments. Goel remarks that much work still needs to be done, and no doubt the future holds many surprises for the cognitive neuroscientists who are focused on studying human reasoning patterns.
Not only in psychology and social science, but also in the field of artificial intelligence, the article in the book entitled "Intelligence" by R. J. Sternberg is particularly important. Psychologists need to understand intelligence and its role in personality and social/personal adjustment while sociologists are very concerned with how to measure it (this being very contentious of late). Those who work in artificial intelligence however need a sound, practical definition of intelligence, not only so they can implement machine intelligence but also measure to what degree one machine is more intelligent than another. Sternberg does not do this in his article, but he gives fine overview of the different approaches taken by cognitive psychologists and biologists. Philosophical ideas on intelligence get represented in the discussion on contextualism, as do system approaches (such as the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences).
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