Approaches to Studying Reasoning

Abstract

More than 85 years ago, Charles Peirce (1903), in a speech at Harvard, criticized a fellow logician for “the fundamental mistake of confounding the logical question with the psychological question. The psychological question is what processes the mind goes through. The logical question is whether the conclusion that will be reached, by applying this or that maxim, will or will not accord with the “fact.” Historically, philosophers analyzing reasoning have fixed their attention on procedures for getting conclusions that accord with the facts. Thus, as Bruner (1986) points out, “There was no psychology of thought, only logic and a catalogue of logical errors” (p. 107).