Rational Models of Cognition

Rational Models of Cognition
Author: Mike Oaksford
Publisher:
Total Pages: 568
Release: 1998
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN:

This book explores a new approach to understanding the human mind - rational analysis - that regards thinking as a facility adapted to the structure of the world. This approach is most closely associated with the work of John R Anderson, who published the original book on rational analysis in 1990. Since then, a great deal of work has been carried out in a number of laboratories around the world, and the aim of this book is to bring this work together for the benefit of the general psychological audience. The book contains chapters by some of the world's leading researchers in memory, categorisation, reasoning, and search, who show how the power of rational analysis can be applied to the central question of how humans think. It will be of interest to students and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and animal behaviour.

Decisionmaking on War and Peace

Decisionmaking on War and Peace
Author: Nehemia Geva
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1997
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781555877217

Reviewing, comparing, and contrasting models of foreign policy, this volume focuses on the cognitive vs rational debate about decisionmaking on war and peace. It provides alternative models of foreign policy choice and identifies when one strategy is more appropriate than another.

Simply Rational

Simply Rational
Author: Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher: Evolution and Cognition
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2015
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 019939007X

Statistical illiteracy can have an enormously negative impact on decision making. This volume of collected papers brings together applied and theoretical research on risks and decision making across the fields of medicine, psychology, and economics. Collectively, the essays demonstrate why the frame in which statistics are communicated is essential for broader understanding and sound decision making, and that understanding risks and uncertainty has wide-reaching implications for daily life. Gerd Gigerenzer provides a lucid review and catalog of concrete instances of heuristics, or rules of thumb, that people and animals rely on to make decisions under uncertainty, explaining why these are very often more rational than probability models. After a critical look at behavioral theories that do not model actual psychological processes, the book concludes with a call for a heuristic revolution that will enable us to understand the ecological rationality of both statistics and heuristics, and bring a dose of sanity to the study of rationality.

The Probabilistic Mind

The Probabilistic Mind
Author: Nick Chater
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2008
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199216096

The Probabilistic Mind is a follow-up to the influential and highly cited Rational Models of Cognition (OUP, 1998). It brings together developmetns in understanding how, and how far, high-level cognitive processes can be understood in rational terms, and particularly using probabilistic Bayesian methods.

Bayesian Rationality

Bayesian Rationality
Author: Mike Oaksford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2007-02-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198524498

For almost 2,500 years, the Western concept of what is to be human has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. In this text a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Author: Daniel Kahneman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1429969350

*Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient *Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.

Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision

Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision
Author: Jerome R. Busemeyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2012-07-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 110701199X

Introduces principles drawn from quantum theory to present a new framework for modeling human cognition and decision.

Bounded Rationality

Bounded Rationality
Author: Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2002-07-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262571647

In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people's reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.

Elements of Reason

Elements of Reason
Author: Arthur Lupia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2000-10-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521653329

Advances in the social sciences are used to uncover cognitive foundations of social decision making.