Many Meanings of ‘Heuristic’

Abstract

A survey of contemporary philosophical and scientific literatures reveals that different authors employ the term ‘heuristic’ in ways that deviate from, and are sometimes inconsistent with, one another. Given its widespread use in philosophy and cognitive science generally, it is striking that there appears to be little concern for a clear account of what phenomena heuristics pick out or refer to. In response, I consider several accounts of ‘heuristic’, and I draw a number of distinctions between different sorts of heuristics in order to make sense of various research programmes. I then develop a working characterization of ‘heuristic’ which is shown to be coherent and robust enough to serve as a kind within philosophy and cognitive science broadly. My intent is not to pursue a unified account of ‘heuristic’, but to highlight some features of certain kinds of heuristics that are important for theorizing about cognition in order to proceed with a science of the mind/brain. 1 Why We Need an Appropriate Characterization of ‘Heuristic’ 2 Inadequate Definitions 2.1 A positive attempt 2.2 Heuristics versus guaranteed correct outcomes 3 A Taxonomy of Heuristics 3.1 Stimulus-driven versus heuristic 3.2 Perceptual versus cognitive heuristics 3.3 Computational versus cognitive heuristics 3.4 Methodological versus inferential heuristics 3.5 Summary of distinctions 4 Characterizing Cognitive Heuristics 4.1 Heuristics as rules of thumb 4.2 Beyond rules of thumb: exploiting information 5 Concluding Remarks