Past Event

Dr. Sheldon Chow of Mount Allison University will be giving a colloquium talk on Friday, February 14th, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., in room 2017 of Dunton Tower (the FASS lounge).

Effective Cognition on the Cheap

Humans tend to reason effectively despite cognitive limitations and constraints. To explain such human cognitive success, a number of philosophers herald heuristics as short-cut procedures that enable economical and satisfactory (though fallible) cognition. In particular, a clutch of philosophers display exuberance for Gigerenzer’s “fast and frugal” heuristics, which have been demonstrated to sometimes lead to more accurate judgments than complex processes. In this talk, I reassess such exuberance for Gigerenzer-style heuristics, focusing on his Recognition Heuristic. I show that many psychologists aren’t as exuberant for Gigerenzer-style heuristics as certain philosophers are, and for good reason: Analysis of psychological data suggests that more information is processed in the given tasks than Gigerenzer maintains; the cognitive processes aren’t “frugal”. This insight lends motivation for me to sketch a model of cognitive architecture in which generous amounts of information are utilized in cognition, even for simple tasks. Important epistemological implications become evident when I explain that, despite the use of generous amounts of information in cognition, the model still allows effective cognition on the cheap.