Heuristics as Unthinking Processes?

Abstract

Abstract The ‘No Reasons challenge’ to common-sense psychology (CP) holds that heuristic-based decision-making is habit-like since both routes travel from stimuli to action/decision without passing through reasons and reasoning. The pressing question for advocates of this challenge, however, is: why should we accept that heuristics are reasons-insensitive decision-making processes? This chapter explores three arguments in favour of this claim. The first two appeal to the introspectable properties of decision-making (speed, ease, automaticity, and awareness), while the last holds that heuristics can simply be defined as reasons-insensitive processes. I argue, however, that none of these arguments goes through. Thus, in the absence of any other support for the reasons-insensitivity of heuristic processes, I conclude that the No Reasons challenge should be rejected. Despite common talk of heuristics as ‘unthinking’, the fact that a decision comes to us quickly, easily, automatically, or unconsciously entails nothing about whether it involves sensitivity to reasons.

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