ABSTRACT
In the study of inductive reasoning, there has been much debate about the standards for correct solutions to problems. Studies by psychologists have frequently used formalized statistical reasoning as the criterion, and have found the reasoning of ordinary adults to fall short of this standard in many cases. Others, however, have criticized this practice of applying formal standards to everyday reasoning. Some epistemologists have argued that inferential standards must be derived from the intuitions of ordinary adults (L. J. Cohen 1979; 1981, Dennett 1978; 1981; Lycan 1981) or that standards must take into account the trade-offs set by limitations of human capacity (Goldman 1978). The following quotations illustrate these views. “Our fundamental epistemic principles and habits, whatever ones they turn out to be exactly, are good principles, in that they are the ones that a wise and benevolent Mother Nature would have endowed us with, given Her antecedent choices of materials and overall anatomical structure” (Lycan 1981, p. 345). “Ordinary human reasoning – by which I mean the reasoning of adults who have not been systematically educated in any branch of logic or probability theory – cannot be held to be faultily programmed: it sets its own standards” (L. J. Cohen 1981, p. 317). “Advice in matters intellectual, as in other matters, should take account of the agent's capacities. There is no point in recommending procedures that cognizers cannot follow or prescribing results that cognizers cannot attain” (Goldman 1978, p. 510).
