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Throwing the normative baby out with the prescriptivist bathwater

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Theodora Achourioti ,
Andrew Fugard  and
Keith Stenning
Theodora Achourioti
Affiliation:
Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation/Philosophy Department, University of Amsterdam, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [email protected]
Andrew Fugard
Affiliation:
Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society, University of Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria. [email protected]
Keith Stenning
Affiliation:
School of Informatics, The Forum, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 1AB, Scotland, United Kingdom. [email protected]
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Abstract

It is neither desirable nor possible to eliminate normative concerns from the psychology of reasoning. Norms define the most fundamental psychological questions: What are people trying to do, and how? Even if no one system of reasoning can be the norm, pure descriptivism is as undesirable and unobtainable in the psychology of reasoning as elsewhere in science.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 5 , October 2011 , pp. 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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