Rationality and Patterns of Reasoning: A European Perspective

Interest in the mutual influence of cognitive abilities and practical reason has been a characteristic feature of European scholarship at least since the scientific revolution. The 'felicific calculus' of eighteenth century European economists and moral philosophers (Hutcheson, Beccaria, and Bentham) suggested a 'mathematics of the mind' that was considered to be a tool for the identification of rational decisions in the private and public spheres. In the first decades of the 20th century, the rise of European scientific philosophy had the explicit goal of bringing to light the rational standards of scientific practice. In both cases, the interaction between reason and practice was a primary focus of attention. Recent work in cognitive science, decision theory and epistemology has called attention to the open-ended structure of rationality and to the role of the human mind in developing conceptual spaces relevant to problem-solving under contingent sets of constraints. This suggests a pragmatic view of rationality that is nonetheless conducive to a rigorous (formal) investigation of decision-making processes. In particular, the conditions for a rational decision are 'moved back' to its cognitive frame, and the latter is associated with an emergent structure deriving from the context-dependent utilisation of cognitive abilities. The pragmatic view of rationality distances itself from the received conceptions of deductive and inductive inference as it is related with a situational conception of reasoning. This means that reasoning comes to be seen as a mental state in which a prior set of cognitive abilities (relatively unstructured) takes on a definite shape as the shifts in context activate one particular set of cognitive procedures after another. As a result, rationality appears to be closely intertwined with a model of justified procedures. However, the reduction of rational procedure to any single-minded criterion of instrumental rationality (or rational success) is avoided. This is because any given problem space is considered, at least partly, as a mental construction, so that identification of problem setting and selection of justified procedure often go hand in hand. The above view of problem spaces and solution procedures suggests a description of rationality in terms of capabilities and procedures rather than in terms of particular actions and strategies. In particular, a rational cognitive agent is primarily an agent who is able to learn in an effective way to 'reconfigure itself' after a cognitive shock. This means that rationality is not associated with the effective utilisation of a fixed set of cognitive rules. The pragmatic view of rationality suggests that a rational agent should be able to make effective use of any given set of cognitive abilities, that not all existing abilities are used at any given time, and that new abilities may become available as the cognitive process unfolds. If this point of view is adopted, rationality appears to presuppose a cognitive system capable of self-reference and reflective states. This means that rational cognitive systems should be endowed with the ability to make sense of their own structure and behaviour. At the same time, a rational cognitive system should be open to the possibility of reconfiguring itself (see above). A pragmatic description of 'reflective rationality' is inherently dynamic, due to emphasis upon reconfiguration ability. It may be conjectured that rationality may be associated with reconfiguration as a result of feedback processes (primarily of the non-linear type). The pragmatic view of rationality calls attention to the variety of patterns of reasoning by which it may be possible to identify satisfactory strategies. This suggests that framing and focal points may be more relevant than standard computational skills in order to reach satisfactory (not necessarily optimal) solutions. It also suggests a different approach to rational choice.