Gigerenzer,G.

In the psychology of thinking, little thought is given to what constitutes good thinking. Instead, normative solutions to problems have been accepted at face value, thereby determining what counts as a reasoning fallacy. I applaud Vranas (Cognition 76 (2000) 179) for thinking seriously about norms. I do, however, disagree with his attempt to provide post hoc justifications for supposed reasoning fallacies in terms of 'content-neutral' norms. Norms need to be constructed for a specific situation, not imposed upon it in a content-blind way. The reason is that content-blind norms disregard relevant structural properties of the given situation, including polysemy, reference classes, and sampling. I also show that content-blind norms can, unwittingly, lead to double standards: the norm in one problem is the fallacy in the next. The alternative to content-blind norms is not no norms, but rather carefully designed norms. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Gigerenzer, G. (2001). Content-blind norms, no norms, or good norms? A reply to Vranas. Cognition, 81, 93-103. (Full text)

Publication year	2001
Document type:	Article
Publication status:	Published
External URL:	http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/gg/GG_Content_2001.pdf View
Categories:	Probability
Keywords:	errorfallacynormsprobabilityrationalityreasoning