L’ATTIVITÀ RIFLESSIVA COSCIENTE COME SISTEMA VIRTUALE REALIZZATO DA SISTEMI INTUITIVI INCONSCI

In this chapter we examine a particular variety of habits: heuristics as understood by some thought psychologists. This construct, along with the related notion of bias, has been at the center of the longstanding debate on rationality in philosophy and cognitive science. In fact, the psychology of thought has been accumulating experimental results that pose profound problems for the classical view of human beings as rational animals for at least fifty years. According to a “bleak” interpretation of the results of these investigations, the layman reasons in ways that give rise to contronormative performance and is therefore “irrational.” Reviewing some crucial junctures in the debate on this bleak interpretation will enable us to bring out a model of cognitive architecture in which the traditional “vertical” distinction between automaticity and reflexivity is replaced by a new “horizontal” distinction between a set of intuitive systems operating at an exclusively unconscious level, and a virtual reflexive system whose operations are partly accompanied by conscious awareness.