When nomenclature matters: Is the “new paradigm” really a new paradigm for the psychology of reasoning?

Abstract

For most of its history, the psychology of reasoning was dominated by binary extensional logic. The so-called “new paradigm” instead puts subjective degrees of belief center stage, often represented as probabilities. We argue that the “new paradigm” is too vaguely defined and therefore does not allow a clear decision about what falls within its scope and what does not. We also show that there was not one settled theoretical “old” paradigm, before the new developments emerged, and that the alleged new paradigm is less revolutionary as the term suggests. A more veridical view is that current progress is developing in continuities where rival research programs can thrive or fail in the face of new experimental findings. The article closes with some topics where more connections between competing research programs are likely to promote progress in our understanding of human reasoning.

Keywords:

• Human reasoning
• theory of science
• new paradigm
• logic
• probability theory
• mental models

Acknowledgements

We are very thankful to the action editor, Shira Elqayam, for many clever comments on early versions of this paper. Without her suggestions, our paper would not be as balanced as it is now. We also thank Igor Douven, David Over, and Sunny Khemlani for their very helpful reviews and Mike Oaksford and Phil Johnson-Laird for reading and commenting on the paper prior to submission. This research was supported by grant KN 465/9-2 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to MK, within the Priority Program “New Frameworks of Rationality” (SPP 1516).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We thank Sunny Khemlani for making this argument in his review. We have basically taken this thought from his review.