Keith Frankish

[About the book]: This volume is a state-of-the-art survey of the psychology of reasoning, based around, and in tribute to, one of the field's most eminent figures: Jonathan St B.T. Evans.In this collection of cutting edge research, Evans' collaborators and colleagues review a wide range of important and developing areas of inquiry. These include biases in thinking, probabilistic and causal reasoning, people's use of 'if' sentences in arguments, the dual-process theory of thought, and the nature of human rationality. These foundational issues are examined from various angles and finally integrated in a concluding panoramic chapter written by Evans himself.The eighteen chapters, all written by leading international researchers, combine state-of the-art research with investigation into the most fundamental questions surrounding human mental life, such as:What is the architecture of the human mind?Are humans rational, and what is the nature of this rationality?How do we think hypothetically? The Science of Reason offer s a unique combination of breadth, depth and integrative vision, making it an indispensable resource for researchers and students of human reason

This chapter outlines a new argument for the view that language has a cognitive role. I suggest that humans exhibit two distinct kinds of belief state, one passively formed, the other actively formed. I argue that actively formed beliefs (_virtual beliefs_, as I call them) can be identified with _premising policies_, and that forming them typically involves certain linguistic operations. I conclude that natural language has at least a limited cognitive role in the formation and manipulation of virtual beliefs

It can be argued that dual-system theorists should adopt an action - based view of System 2 (S2), on which S2 reasoning is an intentional activity. It can also be argued that they should adopt a dual - attitude theory, on which the two systems have distinct sets of propositional attitudes. However, Peter Carruthers has argued that on the action-based view there are no S2 attitudes. This paper replies to Carruthers, proposing a view of S2 attitudes as virtual ones, which are partially realized in S1 attitudes. This view is compatible with, and a natural extension of, the action-based view.