Rationality

Originally published in 1993, reissued here with a new introduction, the study of rationality was one of the most exciting and important areas of contemporary cognitive science: recent research involved collaborations across disciplinary boundaries, and theoretical progress had been rapid and profound. Rationality: Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives gathers together leading researchers in Europe and the United States to survey these developments and present them in an accessible and interesting form. While the emphasis of the book is primarily psychological, the contributors also consider arguments from philosophy, logic and computational theory.

Several major themes emerge: the two views of rationality as logical power and as the ability to do the right thing; the relation between normative (logical) and descriptive (psychological) accounts of human reason; the need to be cautious both in interpreting the dictates of logic and in the conclusions we draw from experiments; arguments for and against the theory of ‘mental logic’; and the bounds of rationality itself. In addition, theoretical arguments are also directed at the kinds of problems for rationality which are found in the real world. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Ken Manktelow is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. His primary research interest has been in the psychology of thinking and reasoning, having undertaken his PhD work at the University of Plymouth, completing in 1980. Besides numerous scientific papers, he is the author, co-author or editor of seven books, including Inference and Understanding (with David Over, Routledge 1990), Reasoning and Thinking (Psychology Press 1999), Psychology of Reasoning: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (ed. with Man Cheung Chung, Psychology Press 2004) and Thinking and Reasoning (Psychology Press 2012). His most recent book is Beyond Reasoning, a biography of Peter Wason, the founding father of the modern psychology of reasoning (Routledge 2021). His research collaboration with David Over began in the mid 1980s.

David Over received his Philosophy PhD in 1974 from Birkbeck, University of London. He is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Durham University in the UK. His research is in the psychology of reasoning and logical topics relevant to it. He is the co-author with Ken Manktelow of Inference and Understanding (Routledge 1990) and with Jonathan Evans of Human Reasoning (2024), Evans & Over If (2004), and Evans & Over Rationality and Reasoning (Psychology Press 1996). He collaborates with Angelo Gilio, Niki Pfeifer, and Giuseppe Sanfilippo in studies of what de Finetti called the logic of probability.