Bounded rationality, biases and superstitions Konrad Talmont-Kaminski KLI & UMCS

Sugar and cyanide

Aims o To show the relevance of work on superstitions as a natural cognitive phenomenon to conceptions of human reasoning abilities o and vice versa

Outline o Contagion heuristic o Superstitions as result of bias o Dual process vs. bounded rationality o Humean habits & heuristics o Implications

Sympathetic magic o Frazer Golden Bough 1890 o Law of similarity (homeopathy) o Like produces like o Drink blood of an ox to be strong o Law of Contagion o Once in contact, always in contact o Burn nail clippings to hurt their ‘owner’ o Incomplete characterisation o Black cats, broken mirrors, etc. o Connections o Homeopathic ‘medicine’ o Germ theory of disease

Contagion as heuristic o Heuristic o A (domain-specific) rule of thumb o Makes sense of the world o Promotes adaptive behaviour o 2 differences from ‘classic’ heuristics o Substantive affective component o People usually aware of irrationality Paul Rozin & Carol Nemeroff “Sympathetic magical thinking” in Gilovich, Griffin, Kahneman eds. Heuristics & Biases 2002

Heuristics & biases o Classic heuristics o Representativeness o Availability o Anchoring o Applying to superstition? o Explaining in terms of bias o Limited possibilities Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman “Judgement under uncertainty: heuristics and biases” in Science

Re-engineering Superstition o Broader view of heuristics needed o A philosophical account o Emotions as cognitive heuristics o Conflict between ‘innate’ & learned heuristics o Contagion clearly fits in o Systematic bias as footprint o Empirical research project Bill Wimsatt, Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings 2007

Systematic bias o Are all bias-caused errors superstitions? o No o What’s the difference? o Are all superstitions bias-caused errors? o Probably, category very broad o Can understand existing work in this theoretical context

Bias & superstition o When is bias not superstition? o Is a superempirical explanation required? o Is it provided? o Not very deep difference between superstition and other results of bias o Correlations suggest this o But superstition harder to get rid of

A choice of theories o Placing heuristics o Dual process theories o Bounded rationality o Different evaluation o Can not identify superstition with a mode of reasoning

Dual process o System 1 vs. System 2 o Intuitive vs. analytical o Heuristics vs. classical rationality o Assumes independence of systems o Problems o Superstition is ubiquitous and persistent o People do not seem to swap into system 2 J. Evans, “Dual processing accounts of reasoning, judgement, and social cognition” Annual Review of Psychology 2008

Bounded rationality o Heuristics only o But variety of very different heuristics o Heuristics build on each other o Heuristics sometimes replace other heuristics o Scientific methods are heuristics o Problem o How to account for logical ability o G. Harman Change in View 1986 o But the same problem for dual process H. Simon Models of Bounded Rationality 1982/1997 G. Gigerenzer “I think, therefore I err” Social Research 2005

Hume, habits and heuristics o David Hume o Habits vs. Reason o The original dual process theory? o But problem of induction o Only habits o Naturalist vs. sceptical reading o Heuristics as habits

Implications o 3 somewhat hypothetical implications o Problem of induction entails we use heuristics o The ubiquity of superstition is evidence for this o Problem of induction does not entail superstitions but can be seen as the ultimate explanation

Thank you