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Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations

Synthese volume 187, pages 471–487 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity \({\phi}\) is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Affiliations

  1. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Iris van Rooij

  2. Department of Philosophy, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

    Cory D. Wright

  3. Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada

    Todd Wareham

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  1. Iris van Rooij
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  2. Cory D. Wright
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  3. Todd Wareham
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Correspondence to Iris van Rooij.

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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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van Rooij, I., Wright, C.D. & Wareham, T. Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations. Synthese 187, 471–487 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9847-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9847-7

Keywords

  • Psychological explanation
  • Computational-level theory
  • Computational complexity
  • Intractability
  • Heuristics
  • NP-hard
  • Algorithm
  • Approximation