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Normative and Descriptive Rationality: From Nature to Artifice and Back

Besold, Tarek R.; Uckelman, Sara L.

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Authors

Tarek R. Besold



Abstract

Rationality plays a key role in both the study of human reasoning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Certain notions of rationality have been adopted in AI as guides for the development of intelligent machines and these notions have been given a normative function. The notions of rationality in AI are often taken to be closely related to conceptions of rationality in human contexts. In this paper, we argue that the normative role of rationality differs in the human and artificial contexts. While rationality in human-focused fields of study is normative, prescribing how humans ought to reason, the normative conception in AI is built on a notion of human rationality which is descriptive, not normative, in the human context, as AI aims at building agents which reason as humans do. In order to make this point, we review prominent notions of rationality used in psychology, cognitive science, and (the history of) philosophy, as well as in AI, and discuss some factors that contributed to rationality being assigned the differing normative statuses in the differing fields of study. We argue that while ‘rationality’ is a normative notion in both AI and in human reasoning, the normativity of the AI conception of ‘rationality’ is grounded in a descriptive account of human rationality.

Citation

Besold, T. R., & Uckelman, S. L. (2018). Normative and Descriptive Rationality: From Nature to Artifice and Back. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 30(2), 331-344. https://doi.org/10.1080/0952813x.2018.1430860

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 23, 2017
Online Publication Date Feb 7, 2018
Publication Date Mar 4, 2018
Deposit Date Jan 10, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence
Print ISSN 0952-813X
Electronic ISSN 1362-3079
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 30
Issue 2
Pages 331-344
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0952813x.2018.1430860

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