Rationality is hard work: An alternative interpretation of the disruptive effects of thinking about reasons

Abstract

Recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. indicates that a consequence of asking subjects to reflect on their attitudes is that they not only reduce the consistency between their attitudes and behavior, but they perform actions which they come to regret. Wilson interprets this work via intra‐psychic concepts, and arrives at the conclusion that it is rational to avoid deliberating about a wide range of attitudes and behaviors. This consequence has objectionable implications for philosophical theories of deliberative practical rationality. I respond to this challenge by reinterpreting the experimental results in a way which is not only consistent with a certain theory of deliberative practical rationality but in which the results lend support to that theory. My interpretive focus is on attending closely to the social circumstances of subjects in the experiments[1].