The interaction between reasoning and decision making: an introduction

Abstract

Reasoning and decision making are high-level cognitive skills that have been under intensive investigation by psychologists and philosophers, among others, for the last thirty years. But, methods and theories have developed separately in the two fields so that distinct traditions have grown with little to say to one another. The aim of this special issue of Cognition is to encourage and help workers in these two traditions to understand one another’s research and to reflect and enhance some recent signs of “crosstalk” between them. It seemed to us high time to consider the growing interactions between reasoning and decision making for at least three reasons. First, the two abilities are often interwoven in real life, at least according to the common-sense view epitomized in the maxim at the head of this introduction. Second, their study has led to striking parallels in the conclusions that investigators have reached and to the recent signs of crosstalk. Third, the two fields have important lessons for each other. We will explore each of these reasons before we introduce the papers in this special issue. We begin with a sketch of the everyday assumptions that relate reasoning and decision making - a background that we will defend, though it is sometimes disparaged by philosophers as “folk psychology”.