Dennett’s dual-process theory of reasoning

Abstract

Content and Consciousness (“C&C) outlines a framework for thinking about the relation between mind and brain that has been hugely influential and salutary. This chapter discusses a relatively neglected aspect of this framework – the treatment of thinking and reasoning in Chap. Viii. Here Dennett distinguishes two senses of “thinking”, parallel to the senses of “awareness” distinguished earlier in the book. In one sense “thinking” refers to sub-personal information processing whose effects are manifest in our intelligent behaviour; in the other it refers to conscious mental acts involved in problem solving. In retrospect, this distinction anticipates the “dual-process theories proposed by many contemporary cognitive and social psychologists, and the chapter shows how Dennett’s distinction can be developed to provide an attractive version of dual-process theory. After introducing dual-process theories, the chapter reviews Dennett’s remarks about thinking in “C&C and shows how they suggest a reinterpretation of dual-process theory as a dual-“level theory, grounded in the personal/sub-personal distinction also introduced in “C&C. Later sections flesh out this theory, drawing on ideas from Dennett’s later work, set out some of its attractions and implications, and show how it can be extended by combining it with a dual-attitude theory of belief also inspired by ideas in Dennett’s work. The result is a picture of the human mind as a two-level structure, composed of a lower level of sub-personal informational states and processes and a higher, “virtual” level of personally constructed mental attitudes and operations.