Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations

Iris van Rooij

Cory Wright

Todd Wareham

pp. 471-487

in: Synthese 187 (2), 2012.

Abstract

Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity ({phi}) is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.