Minimal Rationality

by Christopher Cherniak

In Minimal Rationality, Christopher Cherniak boldly challenges the myth of Man the the Rational Animal and the central role that the "perfectly rational agent" has had in philosophy, psychology, and other cognitive sciences, as well as in economics.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Logan Alexander]

Good book. Tough in places, comfortably intuitive in others. Probably requires a better grasp of Peirce, Quine and the logical positivists than I currently have.

Main points of tacit agreement:
1. Overall rejection of the idealized agent, both practically and epistemologically.
2. Empirical and quasi-empirical justification of (1) via complexity theory and church-Turing thesis.
3. Requirement for a cognitive theory to assist Quine's translation methodology.
4. The argument about how special reasons requirements follow the transcendental (indispensable) requirement of pragmatics.

Issues:
1) I think we can predict people's irrational behaviors. This undermines the implicit indispensablility argument for minimal rationality from natural selection (via predicability).
2) I'm not sure if, for example, Peirce's ideal end of an inquiry requires perfect whole knowledge. Two ways to go here. (1) Run with a non-ideal concept of truth. (2) Allow inquiry to be conducted on narrow questions. - these points may have been addressed in the book.

[Simon]

My article "The Universality of Logic: On the Connection between Rationality and Logical Ability," in Mind 110 (2001) is the definitive refutation of this author's thesis.