Newsletter of Phenomenology

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(2012) Synthese 187 (2).

Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations

Iris van Rooij, Cory Wright, Todd Wareham

pp. 471-487

Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity ({phi}) is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-010-9847-7

Full citation:

van Rooij, I. , Wright, C. , Wareham, T. (2012). Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations. Synthese 187 (2), pp. 471-487.

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