Reframing Empirical Evidence of Irrationality

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents the second part of the response to the Insufficient Reasons challenge to common-sense psychology (CP). It argues that some of the experimental evidence which has been taken to demonstrate failures of rationality can be accommodated in other ways. This possibility opens up since, on closer consideration, it can be seen that there are a range of factors that might explain specific data points without an appeal to irrationality. To see this, the chapter explores different approaches to probability, asks what is really involved in identity-protective cognition and belief perseverance, and sets out the pervasive manner in which people reveal their sensitivity to pragmatic evidence. Taken together with the explanatory methods set out in Chapter 6, this chapter argues that the advocate of CP can reject claims of systematic failure and weakness in typical human decision-making and thus that the Insufficient Reasons challenge can be rejected.

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