ABSTRACT
Throughout most of this book, we have argued our thesis that people are basically rational1 to a reasonable degree—i.e. that they think, reason, and act in such a way as to achieve many basic personal goals. We have also shown that judgements of irrationality are typically made by authors who demand that people should have rationality2—i.e. think or reason according to some impersonal normative system, such as some version of formal logic. These authors expect subjects to be rational2 in abstract or unrealistic experiments, where they may not interpret the instructions in the way the experimenters intend. Against this, we have emphasised the importance of subjective relevance and the role of tacit processing in thinking and reasoning, and in interpreting verbal instructions. However, we have not claimed that there is no place for rationality2. It is a necessary goal itself at times, to advance ordinary and scientific knowledge, and ordinary people do possess it up to a point. They follow logical rules to some degree in their reasoning, and there is an explicit as well as implicit cognitive system.
