Browsing by Author "Evans, J. St. B. T."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Conditionals and non-constructive reasoning.
    (Oxford University Press, 2010) Over, D. E.; Evans, J. St. B. T.; Elqayam, Shira
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Deontic Introduction: A Theory of Inference from Is to Ought
    (2015) Elqayam, Shira; Thompson, V. A.; Wilkinson, M. R.; Evans, J. St. B. T.; Over, D. E.
    Humans have a unique ability to generate novel norms. Faced with the knowledge that there are hungry children in Somalia, we easily and naturally infer that we ought to donate to famine relief charities. Although a contentious and lively issue in metaethics, such inference from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ has not been systematically studied in the psychology of reasoning. We propose that deontic introduction is the result of a rich chain of pragmatic inference, most of it implicit; specifically, when an action is causally linked to a valenced goal, valence transfers to the action and bridges into a deontic conclusion. Participants in five experiments were presented with utility conditionals in which an action results in a benefit, a cost, or neutral outcome (If Lisa buys the booklet, she will pass the exam), and asked to evaluate how strongly deontic conclusions (Lisa should buy the booklet) follow from the premises. Findings show that the direction of the conclusions was determined by outcome valence (Experiment 1a, 1b), whereas their strength was determined by the strength of the causal link between action and outcome (Experiments 1, 2a and 2b). We also found that deontic introduction is defeasible, and can be suppressed by additional premises which interfere with any of the links in the implicit chain of inference (Experiments 2a, 2b and 3). We propose that deontic introduction is a species-specific generative capacity whose function is to regulate future behaviour.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Dual-processing explains base-rate neglect, but which dual-process theory and how?
    (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Evans, J. St. B. T.; Elqayam, Shira
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    First things first: Order bias in deontic disjunctions.
    (Psychology Press, 2010) Elqayam, Shira; Ohm, E.; Evans, J. St. B. T.; Over, D. E.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemOpen Access
    How and why we reason from is to ought
    (Springer, 2018-12-04) Evans, J. St. B. T.; Elqayam, Shira
    Originally identified by Hume, the validity of is-ought inference is much debated in the meta-ethics literature. Our work shows that inference from is to ought typically proceeds from contextualised, value-laden causal utility conditional, bridging into a deontic conclusion. Such conditional statements tell us what actions are needed to achieve or avoid consequences that are good or bad. Psychological research has established that people generally reason fluently and easily with utility conditionals. Our own research also has shown that people’s reasoning from is to ought (deontic introduction) is pragmatically sensitive and adapted to achieving the individual’s goals. But how do we acquire the necessary deontic rules? In this paper, we provide a rationale for this facility linked to Evans’s (2010) framework of dual mind rationality. People have an old mind (in evolutionary terms) which derives its rationality by repeating what has worked in the past, mostly by experiential learning. New mind rationality, in contrast, is evolutionarily recent, uniquely developed in humans, and draws on our ability to mentally simulate hypothetical events removed in time and place. We contend that the new mind achieves its goals by inducing and applying deontic rules and that a mechanism of deontic introduction evolved for this purpose.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    On some limits of hypothetical thinking
    (Taylor and Francis, 2008) Elqayam, Shira; Handley, S. J.; Evans, J. St. B. T.; Bacon, A. M.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Rationality in the new paradigm: Strict versus soft Bayesian approaches
    (2013) Elqayam, Shira; Evans, J. St. B. T.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Towards a descriptivist psychology of reasoning and decision making.
    (2011) Evans, J. St. B. T.; Elqayam, Shira
    Our target article identified normativism as the view that rationality should be evaluated against unconditional normative standards. We believe this to be entrenched in the psychological study of reasoning and decision making and argued that it is damaging to this empirical area of study, calling instead for a descriptivist psychology of reasoning and decision making. The views of 29 commentators (from philosophy and cognitive science as well as psychology) were mixed, including some staunch defences of normativism, but also a number that were broadly supportive of our position, although critical of various details. In particular many defended a position that we call ‘soft normativism’, which sees a role for normative evaluation within boundaries alongside more descriptive research goals. In response, we clarify our use of the term ‘instrumental rationality’ and add discussion of ‘epistemic rationality’ defining both as descriptive and non-normative concepts. We consider the debate with reference to dual process theory, the new paradigm psychology of reasoning and empirical research strategy in these fields. We also discuss cognitive variation by age, intelligence and culture and the issue of relative vs absolute definitions of norms. In conclusion, we hope at least to have raised consciousness about the important boundaries between norm and description in the psychology of thinking.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    Utilitarian Moral Judgment Exclusively Coheres with Inference from Is to Ought
    (Frontiers Media, 2017-06-22) Elqayam, Shira; Wilkinson, M. R.; Thompson, V. A.; Over, D. E.; Evans, J. St. B. T.
    Faced with moral choice, people either judge according to pre-existing obligations (deontological judgment), or by taking into account the consequences of their actions (utilitarian judgment). We propose that the latter coheres with a more general cognitive mechanism – deontic introduction, the tendency to infer normative (‘deontic’) conclusions from descriptive premises (is-ought inference). Participants were presented with vignettes that allowed either deontological or utilitarian choice, and asked to draw a range of deontic conclusions, as well as judge the overall moral rightness of each choice separately. We predicted and found a selective defeasibility pattern, in which manipulations that suppressed deontic introduction also suppressed utilitarian moral judgment, but had little effect on deontological moral judgment. Thus, deontic introduction coheres with utilitarian moral judgment almost exclusively. We suggest a family of norm-generating informal inferences, in which normative conclusions are drawn from descriptive (although value-laden) premises. This family includes deontic introduction and utilitarian moral judgment as well as other informal inferences. We conclude with a call for greater integration of research in moral judgment and research into deontic reasoning and informal inference.