David Thorstad

Recent studies allege that large language models (LLMs) exhibit a range of cognitive biases familiar from human cognition. I argue that the case for many biases is weaker than it may appear. Using case studies of knowledge effects in the Wason selection task, availability bias in relation extraction, and anchoring bias in code generation, I show how a range of vindicatory strategies traditionally used to vindicate apparent biases in humans can be used to push back against allegations of bias in LLMs. I discuss implications for the role of cognitive bias in evaluating LLM performance, the rationality of human cognition, and future work on cognitive bias in LLMs.

I present evidence for a systematic complexity–coherence trade-off in cognition. I show how feasible strategies for increasing cognitive complexity along three dimensions come at the expense of a heightened vulnerability to incoherence. I discuss two normative implications of the complexity–coherence trade-off: a novel challenge to coherence-based theories of bounded rationality and a new strategy for vindicating the rationality of seemingly irrational cognitions. I also discuss how the complexity–coherence trade-off sharpens recent descriptive challenges to dual process theories of cognition.

Informing others about the world is often a helpful act. In this paper, I study agents who conduct experiments to gather information about the world, committing in advance to fully disclose the nature of the experiment together with all experimental findings. While this appears to be a benign activity, I characterize a type of exploitative informing that is possible even within this restricted setup. I show how exploitative informants use public experiments to predictably manipulate interlocutors’ beliefs and actions to their own advantage. I discuss epistemic and practical grounds on which it may be permissible for agents to resist acts of exploitative informing, then conclude by discussing implications for epistemic injustice and duties to gather evidence.

Herbert Simon held that the fundamental turn in the study of bounded rationality is the turn from substantive to procedural rationality. Theories of substantive rationality begin with normative questions about attitudes: what should we prefer, intend, or believe? By contrast, theories of procedural rationality begin with normative questions about processes of inquiry: how should we determine what to prefer, intend, or believe? If Simon was right, then the central task for theories of bounded rationality is to develop an account of rational inquiry for bounded agents. We need, that is, a theory of inquiry under bounds. Inquiry Under Bounds takes as its starting point a five-point bounded rationality program inspired by recent work in cognitive science. To elaborate on and defend that program, Thorstad argues we need an account of rational inquiry for bounded agents. Inquiry under bounds develops an account of rational inquiry for bounded agents: the reason-responsiveness consequentialist view. I use this account to clarify and defend key insights from the bounded tradition as well as to shed light on recent controversies in the epistemology of inquiry.

A new wave of evidentialist theorizing concedes that evidentialism may be extensionally incorrect as an account of all-things-considered rational belief. Nevertheless, these _newer evidentialists_ maintain that there is an importantly distinct type of epistemic rationality about which evidentialism may be the correct account. I argue that natural ways of developing the newer evidentialist position face opposite problems. One version, due to Christensen (Philos Phenomenol Res 103:501–517, 2021), may correctly describe what rationality requires, but does not entail the existence of a distinctively epistemic type of rationality. Another version, due to Maguire and Woods (Philos Rev 129:211–249, 2020), characterizes a normative concept that is both distinct and epistemic, but struggles to explain why this concept should be classified as a type of rationality. I conclude that the newer evidentialist strategy of extensional compromise may be less favorable to evidentialism than previously supposed.

Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. It is argued that theories of bounded rationality are overly context‐sensitive; conventionalist; or dependent on ordinary language (Carr, 2022; Pasnau, 2013). In this paper, I have three aims. The first is to set out and motivate an approach to bounded rationality in epistemology inspired by traditional theories of bounded rationality in cognitive science. My second aim is to show how this approach can answer recent challenges raised for theories of bounded rationality. My third aim is to clarify the role of rational ideals in bounded rationality.