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A case for limited prescriptive normativism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Emmanuel M. Pothos
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom. e.m.pothos@swansea.ac.ukhttp://psy.swan.ac.uk/staff/pothos/
Jerome R. Busemeyer
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. jbusemey@indiana.eduhttp://mypage.iu.edu/~jbusemey/home.html

Abstract

Understanding cognitive processes with a formal framework necessitates some limited, internal prescriptive normativism. This is because it is not possible to endorse the psychological relevance of some axioms in a formal framework, but reject that of others. The empirical challenge then becomes identifying the remit of different formal frameworks, an objective consistent with the descriptivism Elqayam & Evans (E&E) advocate.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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