Irrationality: Philosophical Aspects

Abstract

Over the past few decades, human reason and rationality has become one of the most intensely investigated and hotly debated topics in psychology and cognitive science. At the heart of this debate is a view of human rationality, often associated with the Heuristics and Biases tradition, according to which, much of our reasoning and decision-making is normatively problematic because it relies on heuristics and biases rather than rational principles. In this article we describe briefly some of the evidence that has been invoked in support of this contention and consider some of the more prominent objections that have been leveled against it. In particular, we focus on a range of challenges that have come from the newly emerging, interdisciplinary field of evolutionary psychology.