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Contextual Debiasing and Critical Thinking: Reasons for Optimism

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Abstract

In this article I argue that most biases in argumentation and decision-making can and should be counteracted. Although biases can prove beneficial in certain contexts, I contend that they are generally maladaptive and need correction. Yet critical thinking alone seems insufficient to mitigate biases in everyday contexts. I develop a contextualist approach, according to which cognitive debiasing strategies need to be supplemented by extra-psychic devices that rely on social and environmental constraints in order to promote rational reasoning. Finally, I examine several examples of contextual debiasing strategies and show how they can contribute to enhance critical thinking at a cognitive level.

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Notes

  1. Despite mounting criticism, Meliorism remains the dominant position among philosophers and psychologists. See for example Elster (2007), Evans (2007), Kahneman (2011), Kenyon and Beaulac (2014), Stanovich (2011), Larrick (2004), Croskerry et al. (2013a), Tetlock (2005), Wilson and Brekke (1994).

  2. Taylor (1989, p. 237) explicitly acknowledges this aspect: “Unrealistic optimism might lead people to ignore legitimate risks in their environment and to fail to take measures to offset those risks”.

  3. See, for example, Aberdein (2010) and Cohen (2009).

  4. Psychologists distinguish between two kinds of cognitive illusions: motivational (or “hot”) biases, on the one hand, which stem from the influence of emotions and interests on cognitive processes, and cognitive (or “cold”) biases, on the other hand, which stem from inferential errors due to cognitive malfunctioning (Kunda 1990; Nisbett 1993).

  5. Cf. Fisher (2011, p. 4), Lau (2011, p. 2), Siegel (1988, p. 32).

  6. The “tools” metaphor can also be found in other approaches that stress the importance of non-cognitive (or extra-psychic) devices as means to promote rationality: Soll et al. (2015) refer to “debiasing tools”, Hogarth (2001) to “decision-making tools”, Elster (1989) to the “toolbox of mechanisms”, and Gigerenzer and Selten (2002) to the “adaptive toolbox”.

  7. See, for example, Kenyon and Beaulac (2014), Larrick (2004), Soll et al. (2015).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Work on this article was conducted under the grant SFRH/BPD/101744/2014 by the “Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology” (FCT), as part of the project “Values in argumentative discourse” (PTDC/MHC-FIL/0521/2014).

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  1. ArgLab, IFILNOVA, Nova Institute of Philosophy, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. De Berna 26, 4º piso, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Vasco Correia

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Correia, V. Contextual Debiasing and Critical Thinking: Reasons for Optimism. Topoi 37, 103–111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9388-x

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