Imitative Reasoning

Abstract

On the classical instrumental view, practical reason is an all‐things‐considered enterprise, concerned not merely with identifying and evaluating appropriate means to the realization of ends construed as uncriticizable, but also with coordinating achievement of their sum. The concept of a totality of ranked concerns is the cornerstone of the theory of utility. This paper discusses some of the ways that practical reasoning, on the ground, is not instrumental in this sense. The paper will demonstrate that some of what goes on by way of practical reasoning on the ground involves a certain simple inference schema—to be called “imitative reasoning”—that involves mobilization of what has been alternately referred to as archetypes, scripts, stereotypes and schemas including most importantly self‐schemas or self‐concepts. Imitative reasoning, as the paper will argue, is especially hostile to deliberations that involve the sorts of tradeoffs that applications of utility theory routinely advise. It is therefore no expression or realization, however imperfect, of the notion of maximization. What is more, this framework routinely evokes as authoritative the norms of privilege, however removed from or irrelevant to the matter at hand, which might be as simple as where to go for dinner. For it is the basis of—among other things—class and race consciousness. Furthermore, it is highly subject to manipulation by the unscrupulous; such as, for example, by those who market consumer goods, especially to children. For this form of reasoning is employed so as to protect or enhance self‐concepts: imitative reasoning is a form of motivated reasoning. Laying it out in schema form will shed light on the sort of reasoning processes that transpire in many cases of cognitive dissonance reduction.

Keywords:

• Practical Reasoning
• Imitative Reasoning
• Stereotyping
• Dual Process Theories
• Consumer Choice
• Imitation
• Dissonance Reduction
• Self‐enhancement
• Status Consciousness
• Virtue Training
• Need for Closure

Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the succor this piece has received from my Utah colleagues, especially Chrisoula Andreou. Comments from two anonymous referees for this journal were exceptionally helpful. Thanks also to those in attendance at the first presentation of this piece at the inaugural meeting of the Utah Philosophical Society, November 2006.

Notes

[1] A “frame” is a set of beliefs, attitudes, values, mental models, and so forth, that is utilized in the apprehension of a decision situation, as a lens of interpretation. The literature on the framing of choice situations is now vast, but the locus classicus is Tversky and Kahneman (1981). See also Tversky and Kahneman (1986).

[2] Lawlor (2004) criticizes this approach.

[3] Indeed the attempt to taxonomize logical fallacies is itself often considered a fallacy. And while it is a true point of logic that instances of logical schemata proposed as invalid may also be instances of undeniably valid schemata, it nowise follows from this that inference forms fall into natural kind, groups that enjoy independent natural histories.

[4] Key and Aiello (1999) advance the hypothesis of a female cooperation suite, which includes shared childcare, concealed ovulation and synchronized cycles of fertility. Kristin Hawkes et al. (2000) advance the hypothesis that postmenopausal grandmothering is a further piece in that suite.

[5] These facts are arrayed in Tomasello (1999, 2000), and discussed by Sterelny (2003, 116ff).

[6] Sterelny (2003) takes up these questions and surveys some of the research.

[7] Very probably, the capacity for imitation is founded upon a capacity for perspective‐taking. The term perspective‐taking originated in the 1920s and 1930s in the work of Jean Piaget (1926 [1952]), and G. Mead (1934). Rediscovery of the idea of perspective‐taking in recent times has kindled criticism of research programs in cognitive psychology that postulate innate modules or contents (theories) as the basis for human performance. The efforts are largely undertaken by a school of cognitive and social psychologists utilizing the conception of simulation, who are eminently represented by Paul Harris (1991, 1994, 1995) and Robert Selman (1980).

[8] Imitation capacities appear to be at least partly defective in autism, and this explains a range of autistic phenomena. See Rogers et al. (2003), and Williams et al. (2001).

[9] This is an area pioneered in the 1980s by Elliott Turiel (for example, Turiel 1983). For applications of domain theory to the educational setting, see Nucci and Weber (1991).

[10] See Gilbert, Tafarodi, and Malone (1993); Gilbert (1993) surveys further supporting evidence.

[11] When I say “computation”, I do not exclude a satisfying sort of computation, as contrasted with a maximizing one.

[12] Perloff (1983) provides a review of studies in this area.

[13] Decades of self‐efficacy research underscores the importance of self‐confidence in performance. See Bandura (1997). But research across cultures has demonstrated consistent (and enormous) differences in how large a role self‐esteem plays in motivating people inhabiting cultures on different ends of the individualism/collectivism scale (Heine 2008; especially chapter 5).

[14] According to W. McDougall (1932) it is the master sentiment. For sociologist E. Becker, this was fundamentally a law of human development: “the Principle of Self‐Esteem Maintenance” (1968, 328).

[15] Kruglanski and Webster (1996) and Kruglanski (1989).

[16] Cooper (2007) is a brilliant survey, if somewhat biased.

[17] Kivetz (1999) suggests trying to model these interactions.

[18] Prominent conceptions of practical reasoning in philosophy (Bratman 1987; Korsgaard 1996; Velleman 2001)—are thoroughly intellectual: practical deliberation, as currently conceived in these parts of the academy, is a process of intellection or cogitation, the application of a rule or algorithm adopted in advance of action, concerning what to do in a select and often high‐minded space of choice situations. What is more, no empirical work impinges upon it: no empirical studies of agents are performed or collected or cited in support of these studies.

[19] Responding to the implausibility of this view is Millgram (1997).

[20] There are further weaknesses to producing a force model for the utility calculus, problems that beset and exercised Donald Davidson. These problems do not impact our present discussion, but I have treated them in Thalos (2007).

[21] For which I have entirely my friend and colleague Chrisoula Andreou to thank.

[22] I owe this point to the kindness of an anonymous referee.