STYLES OF RATIONALITY Ruth

By whatever general principles and mechanisms animal behavior is governed, human behavior control rides piggyback on top of the same or very similar mechanisms. We have reflexes. We can be conditioned. The movements that make up our smaller actions are mostly caught up in perception-action cycles following perceived Gibsonian affordances. Still, without doubt there are levels of behavior control that are peculiar to humans. Following Aristotle, tradition has it that what is added in humans is rationality ("rational soul"). Rationality, however, can be and has been characterized in many different ways. I am going to speculate about two different kinds of cognitive capacities that we humans seem to have, each of which is at least akin to rationality as Aristotle described it. The first I believe we share with many other animals, the second perhaps with none. Since this session of the conference on rational animals has been designated a "brainstorming" session, I will take philosopher's license, presenting no more than the softest sort of intuitive evidence for these ideas. Traditionally, the paradigm of human "rational behavior" is taken to be engaging in Aristotelian practical inference. Practical inference is usually described as reasoning in something like the form of a proof: I desire A, doing B will probably lead to A, therefore I'll do B. In reality, however, that is not the way practical reasoning goes at all. Rather, it is the way conclusions are justified to other people. The core of actual practical reasoning processes is not like a proof but like a search for a proof. Just as in