Reasoning with Bounded Rationality

Abstract

Oaksford and Chater (1992) have criticized an earlier discussion of theories of human reasoning (Evans, 1991) for omission of the concept of bounded rationality. They argue that all existing theories of deductive competence would become computationally intractable when applied to complex real-world problems. In reply, it is accepted that we cannot use explicit deductive reasoning based on either inference rules or mental models in the face of complex problems. However, it is suggested first of all that we do engage in explicit reasoning with relatively simple but important real-world problems, and that the mental models theory provides a plausible account of how this is achieved. Complex real-world problem see are knowledge-based and are thus probably dealt with by the induction of schemas or by connectionist mechanisms which we know to be very efficient in the human brain. Thus much real-world reasoning will be implicit and inductive, rather than explicit and deductive. © 1992, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.