On Peikoff's ‘Fact and Value’

I wrote the following 28 years ago. At that time I gave copies to a few people, but did not publish it. The forthcoming book referred to in the last paragraph is Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. 'Fact and Value' had the lead role in the Objectivist schism of 1989. Most other comments about the schism have been about whether Objectivism is closed or open, or about sanctioning. I considered that a mere "turf war" then, and still do.

ON PEIKOFF’S ‘FACT AND VALUE’

by Merlin Jetton        July 27, 1989

The series of articles by Peter Schwartz, David Kelley, and Leonard Peikoff was both interesting and disappointing to read. It amazes me that such a heated exchange could arise from the mere event of David Kelley making a speech.

I have come to expect such behavior from Schwartz. He has a history of making straw men and burning them. He sometimes makes bizarre judgments. He did that in this instance, operating under the principle that one should judge a speech by its audience and its content is irrelevant. But to me Peikoff’s article ‘Fact and Value’ was the most disturbing part of the exchange. It was not just that he put words in Kelley’s mouth and was unfair in judging him. There are probably many people who would agree with that. There will probably be much said and written about it, so I shall, for the most part, leave that subject for others. The most disturbing part of Mr. Peikoff’s article was the illogical statements. He is the most prominent living spokesman for Objectivism, a philosophy which is committed to reason and logic. As such, I would expect from him a more acute attention to logic.

I considered calling this article “The All or Nothing Syndrome”, which is an affliction of Mr. Peikoff’s. It refers to the tendency to obliterate the distinction between “some” and “all” (or between “none” and “some”), which is an extremely important one in logic. There are several instances of it in Peikoff’s article.

He says, “In my judgment, Kelley’s paper is a repudiation of the fundamental principles of Objectivism.” Kelley and Peikoff clearly have different views about the relationship between fact and value. But did Kelley repudiate “A is A”? Does disagreement on just one principle imply disagreement on all of them?

He argues for the principle: Every “is” implies an “ought”. Note that the first word is “every”, not “some”. The word “every” makes it an overstatement. It baffles me to hear that any trivial, irrelevant fact implies an “ought.” There is the always applicable one that I ought to regard it as a fact, but that is far from the principle’s intended meaning.

He claims that the good is a species of the true and that evil is a species of the false. This is an apparently profound idea, so I did not take it lightly. Consider the logic of this statement. It says if X has the attribute “good”, then X necessarily also has the attribute “true”, and that if X has the attribute “evil”, then X necessarily also has the attribute “false”. I have a few comments:

Some X being both good and true does not imply that any X which is good is also true; similarly for both evil and false.

Hitler was evil. Would Peikoff also say he was “false”? If so, that is bizarre.

It implies there is no such thing as an evil truth. Is the fact that Hitler and the Nazis murdered millions of people not an evil truth? And Peikoff later gives examples of bad truths, such as too much exposure to the sun is bad and getting caught in a tidal wave is bad, which are inconsistent with the claim.

Similarly, it implies there is no such thing as a good falsehood, for which a counterexample easily comes to mind. Suppose A tells a lie to B to protect C, where B has malicious intent and C is innocent of wrongdoing.

It is muddled. There are truths about what is good for us and about what is bad for us. It is good for us to know these truths. There are falsehoods about what is good for us and what is bad for us. It may be or is (the right verb depends on the case) bad for us if we believe these falsehoods. This makes sense, but it is far from what he wrote.

I checked Ayn Rand’s writing for an idea having any resemblance to it and found nothing. And Peikoff exhorts the reader to not rewrite Objectivism!

He correctly paraphrases Kelley as saying: Truth and falsity apply primarily to ideas, and good and evil primarily to actions. Note that Kelley uses the word “primarily”, not “exclusively” or “only”. Yet Peikoff launches an extended polemic as if Kelley had said one of the latter. Admittedly Kelley gave a couple of poor examples in discussing the subject. Kelley also failed to make it clear that no dichotomy can be drawn between a man’s ideas and his actions. But did Peikoff deliberately misrepresent Kelley to set up his polemic? Or did he fail to note the logical import of the word “primarily” means there are exceptions? Either way, it does not speak well for Mr. Peikoff.

He devotes a substantial part of his article to his ideas about the connection between fact and value, between cognition and evaluation. He summarizes his view in a single principle -- cognition implies evaluation -- which he says is the main point of his article. In my opinion, when he was writing this, he was so eager to railroad Kelley that he let his emotions interfere with his reasoning and clear communication. (Does this mean that his evaluation implied his cognition?) This is a topic on which I have not spent sufficient time to articulate well my own ideas, but I shall not let that stop me from making a few comments:

I found it difficult understanding clearly what he said and I attribute it to his lack of clarification of key concepts. For example, “evaluation” may mean a judgment about true/false or about good/bad. Ayn Rand more than once said that to properly evaluate what someone says or writes, look for the definitions. Well, I found none in Peikoff’s exposition.

I will presume that he meant by his principle something like this: one should properly understand the phenomena or idea (Objectivist epistemology), then decide whether it is good or bad based on one’s understanding (and act accordingly). If this is even close, then I believe he made a poor choice of words by using “imply”. This is a term of logic and generally means the consequence follows necessarily from the premise(s). But cognition and evaluation are volitional, so evaluation is not a necessary, automatic consequence of cognition. Cognition and evaluation can only be connected logically by thinking, which is volitional.

Mr. Peikoff said “every cognition implies an evaluation”, using “evaluation” in the sense of good/bad. If he really believes that, then I say his belief is seriously flawed. It would be a gross overstatement. If the instance of cognition were one of learning a new subject or idea and the knowledge gained were not instantaneously integrated, it would be a gross mistake to make such an evaluation. Facing reality and making good judgments also requires proper recognition of one’s state of knowledge.

Now imagine a person who believes that every cognition demands moral evaluation and who is afflicted with the all-or-nothing syndrome. That person would be overzealous to pass moral judgment and would do so on a fragment of evidence, evading any evidence which would indicate a different judgment.

Mr. Peikoff may have impressed a few readers by pointing out the contrapositive of his principle, i.e. that non-evaluation implies non-cognition, but I saw it as a misuse of logic. One of my previous comments was about the use of “imply” in this context. Another pointed out an obvious counterexample to ‘all cognition implies evaluation’. His contrapositive applied to that counterexample is: If the person did not pass moral judgment, then the person learned nothing!

Mr. Peikoff tries to posit a much more extensive connection between true/false and good/evil, between “is” and “ought”, and between fact and value than can be reasonably substantiated. It was both innovative and revolutionary for Ayn Rand to hold that there was such a connection, considering that Hume and many later philosophers held that there was absolutely no connection. However, the negation of “none” is “some”, not “all”.

Peikoff says “Kelley’s viewpoint is an explicit defense of a dichotomy between fact and value, or between cognition and evaluation, and thus between mind and body.” Here is misrepresentation and a non sequitor in the same sentence! Kelley defended a difference or distinction between fact and value, but hardly a dichotomy. Even if Kelley had defended a dichotomy between cognition and evaluation, it would be a dichotomy between two functions of mind, which clearly would not imply a dichotomy between mind and body.

Mr. Peikoff says, “a proper philosophy is an integrated whole, any change in any element of which would destroy the entire system.” I have two comments:

It implies no one philosophical principle is stronger than any other. In other words, every philosophical principle is equally important. I find this notion totally contrary to Peikoff’s often repeated claim that knowledge is hierarchical.

It seems to say you either have it all right or none of it right. It is another instance of the all-or-nothing syndrome.

He did not discuss the Libertarians like Schwartz did, but he did say he completely agreed with Schwartz, who is also much afflicted with the all-or-nothing syndrome. An example is: Some Libertarians are anarchist-subjectivists. They are morally reprehensible. Therefore, any Libertarian is morally reprehensible.

Mr. Peikoff’s all-or-nothing syndrome appears again in his closing paragraphs. He tells readers, in effect, to agree with him totally or disassociate themselves with Objectivism. This article makes me wonder how Objectivism will flourish with him carrying the torch. Logical flaws and the all-or-nothing syndrome make poor impressions. The all-or-nothing syndrome may come in handy in polemics and politics, but it is anti-logic and anti-reason. I believe it is inappropriate for anyone who considers himself/herself to be objective.

I have made some strong criticisms of Mr. Peikoff here, so it seems appropriate that my closing be tolerant, and I shall not pass judgment on him solely on the basis of ‘Fact and Value’ and be guilty of the all-or-nothing syndrome. I did agree with parts of his description of Objectivism. I have appreciated his past lectures. I shall probably be tolerant enough to buy his forthcoming book.

How We Know #14: Overview

In Chapter 11 Binswanger presents an overview of the history of philosophy. It is a striking contract of two perspectives on percepts, concepts, and knowledge. The major characters for one perspective are Aristotle and Ayn Rand. The major characters for the other are Plato, Descartes, and Kant.

“The root of the clash between Aristotle and Plato lies in their opposed views on a fundamental.”

“Aristotelians uphold the primacy of perception over conception: perceptual awareness precedes, and supplies the base for conceptual awareness; concepts are abstractions from perceptual material.”

“Platonists assert the opposite position – i.e., the primacy of concepts over perception. Platonists claim that some or all concepts are grasped by some unspecifiable, ineffable form of awareness of ”universals” dwelling in another “higher” reality.”

“Only extreme Platonists hold that the existence of percepts depends on concepts. E.g., Kant claims that perception is shaped by “categories of the intuition,” and in contemporary jargon, perception is theory-laden.” The result in either case is viewing perception as distorted, biased, “merely relative to us,” or not of “things as they are in themselves.”

“The primacy of perception leads to a wider point: knowledge is essentially “bottom-up,” not “top-down.” Conceptual knowledge is acquired by building up from perceptual data.”

A later section, The Kantian Reversal, critiques the ideas of Immanuel Kant. “Kant reversed a crucial distinction, between the what and the how – between what one knows and how one knows it. Kant turns the means of awareness into the only objects of awareness” (385).

Chapter 11 is the last chapter, so this probably is my last post on How We Know.

How We Know #13: Free Will

Chapter 10 is about free will or volition.

Free will has traditionally been thought of as the ability to choose among alternative physical actions. This is not false, but it is quite superficial. The actual primary is the rationality or irrationality of one's mental processes. It is this that is under one's direct volitional control. It is fundamentally an epistemological issue. "Man's free will consists in his sovereign control over how he uses his mind." But sovereign control is not omnipotence. Determinism denies this sovereign control. It claims that one's sense of control is illusory.

One's power to take hold of the mental reins is present as a choice. In Ayn Rand's terms, it is the choice between thinking or not. "Mental focus is wider and deeper than thinking; it is the precondition of thinking." Epistemologically, focus mean rationality.

"Perceptual processes are automatically in contact with the world; conceptual processes are not. Conceptual processes performed out of focus result in mental content that is invalid, subjective, out of touch with reality.

The basic choice of focus is independent of any specific motive.

"Fundamentally, consciousness is navigational: it is identification used to guide action. A prime example is the process of deliberating on alternative courses of actions." It is both intellectual and practical.

Man can reflect on and evaluate his own decision making process, including among others I am too tired now to decide or I need more information, or I'm uncertain but must choose.

A man's character is the net product of all of his choices. Every choice leaves its trace.

Volition is axiomatic. "Volition is not only self-evident -- directly introspectible -- it is fundamental to conceptual cognition" (355, my italics).

Coffey Critiques Kant #4

More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows. I find this rather obvious allusion to Kant's ideas rather funny.

"When the plain man distinguishes between "appearance" and "reality," between "what a thing appears to be" and what it "really is," he is certainly not thinking of two distinct "things," -- one a "mental" thing (an "appearance") and the other an "extramental" thing (a "reality"), -- but of one and the same (extramental) thing under two aspects, viz. of this thing as (he thinks that) it now appears, and he otherwise knows it to be. Yet philosophers, reflecting on the distinction, have come to think of two distinct things, viz. the extramental thing (the "thing in itself" the "noumenon") and a "mental" thing which they call an "appearance" or "phenomenon"; and some philosophers have concluded that we can never get beyond knowledge of the latter" (Vol. 2, p. 168).

Coffey Critiques Kant #3

More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows.

After routing Kant's ideas about space, he does the same with Kant's notion of time. Kant didn't have near as much to say about time as he did space, but he considered time to be no more a characteristic of things than space. Like space it is a priori form of perception, but he regarded space as an external form and time as an internal form (Vol. 2, p. 202).

"One final and fatal flaw in Kant's thesis that time is a form of our perception of events is this. He himself is forced to recognize that some temporal relations belong to the physical events which we perceive: that there are, in these, temporal successions, which by virtue of their irreversibility, differ from mere successions (e.g. that of the moon moving around the earth), as objective, from other successions (e.g. of  our impressions as we survey the parts of a house) as subjective. Hence time would not be a form or character of our perceptions exclusively, but also of things perceived" (Vol. 2, p. 207).

Coffey Critiques Kant #2

More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows.

In Volume 2, Chapter XXI Coffey critiques Kant's a priori view of space as follows.

Kant: "Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from external experience. ... [T]he representation of space cannot be borrowed through experience from relations of external phenomena, but, on the contrary, this external experience becomes possible only by means of the representation of space" (CPR).

Coffey: The drift of the argument is plain enough. It is that in order, for example, to apprehend that A is in front of me and to the right of B, a spatial relation, I must have first apprehended empty space. Therefore, apprehension of space is an a priori perception.

I skip Coffey's first counter-argument that pertains to geometry.

"Secondly, we have no actual sense or sense intuition of empty space antecedently to our empirical sense perception of individual spatial things and relations, or indeed subsequently either" (191).

Thirdly, as Kant argues, if to apprehend things as extended and spatially related, we must not only have the capacity to do so, but also an a priori actual perception of empty space. Then why doesn't he argue similarly for individual colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.? Instead, he disclaims the need of a priori forms for them.

"Fourthly, the space of which Kant was thinking as perceived a priori is de facto space conceived in the abstract by the understanding" (192).

The second and fourth arguments seem strong, but the third argument less so. Color regarded abstractly, but no particular color, akin to an empty placeholder, makes sense. Ditto for sound, taste, and smell. Kant could have said that colorless, soundless, tasteless, and odorless are properties of some real, non-abstract things, hence a posteriori. However, he denied a posteriori empty space. He wrote, "experience can never supply a proof of empty space" (CPR 200, Penguin Classics)." Huh? What about an empty space on a bookcase shelf?

Coffey Critiques Kant #1

I have been reading Peter Coffey's 2-volume Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge (#1, #2), first published in 1917. Coffey was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and Neoscholastic philosopher. He often critiques Immanuel Kant's ideas in these volumes. I tip my hat to George H. Smith for recommending this work (link).

In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant famously posited space and time as "pure intuitions" and "forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience" that the mind imposes upon experience. In Volume 2, Chapter XXI Coffey calls Kant's doctrine confused and ambiguous.

When Kant tried removing from 'the representation of a body' all that belongs to conception and all that belongs to to sensation, he says "there remains something of that empirical intuition, viz. extension and form" that belong to the perceived body. Coffey writes: "Yet in the very next sentence he says that it belongs to 'pure intuition, which a priori . . . exists in the mind as a mere form of sensibility'. But he does not say whether it belongs to this 'pure intuition' as its form, i.e. as a general mode or power of perceiving, or rather as identical with the the actual pure a priori intuition itself ; because he confounds the 'form' of pure intuition with the actual intuition of empty space."

"Now if Kant meant by 'forms of intuition,' consistently and exclusively, mental capacities or powers of apprehending what we become aware of as being endowed with this, that, or the other quality, then of course it is true that the mind has such 'forms,' and has them a priori: in other words, it is true that the mind, in order to become aware of anything as e.g. hard, or cold, or white, or bitter, or loud, or sweet-smelling, or extended, or moving, etc., must have, as a prerequisite condition for such actual perceptions, the corresponding mental capacities or powers of perception. But in that case we should say that there are not merely two a priori forms of sense perception, but as many as there are distinct perceptible sense qualities in physical nature; and the two forms whereby we apprehend the qualities, space and time, we should not call space and time, but forms of our perception of space and time. Kant, however, contends that all the other sense qualities, except space and time, belong to the mental material of perception, viz. to sensations while sense and time alone are mental forms of perception" (p. 188-9).          

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #6

More from Keith Stanovich's Rationality & the Reflective Mind follows.

Stanovich links different kinds of mental pathology with Type 1 (the autonomous mind) and Type 2 processing.

“Cognitive neuroscientists have uncovered cases of mental pathology that are characterized by inadequate behavioral regulation from the emotion subsystems in the autonomous mind-- for example [ ] patients with damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These individuals have severe difficulties in real-life decision-making but do not display the impairments in sustained attention and executive control that are characteristic of individuals with damage in dorsolateral frontal regions.”

Behavioral regulation can go wrong in two ways. First, signals shaping behavior from the autonomous mind are too pervasive and are not overridden by Type 2 processing. Second, automatic regulation of goals by the autonomous mind is lacking, and Type 2 processing is faced with too many possibilities. The latter is called the Dr. Spock problem (p. 116-7).

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #5

More from Keith Stanovich's Rationality & the Reflective Mind follows.

Some people have argued that the research in the heuristics and biases tradition -- began by Kahneman and Tversky in the late 1970s -- has not shown human irrationality at all. They argue that the assumption of maximal human rationality is the proper default position, and have been dubbed the Panglossians. (Panglossian means naively optimistic and is based on the character Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide.) This position posits no difference between descriptive and normative models of performance "because human performance is normative." How do they explain the many observed errors of human thought? They argue that the normative model applied is not appropriate because the subject's interpretation of the task is different from what the researcher's is. They also argue that the modal response in the task makes sense from an evolutionary perspective (p. 8-9).

The Panglossians that Stanovich names are philosophers Nicholas Rescher and L. J. Cohen. Rescher argued that "to construe the data of these interesting experimental studies [of probabilistic reasoning] to mean that people are systematically programmed to fallacious processes of reasoning....is questionable. .... While all (normal) people are to be credited with the capacity to reason, they frequently do not exercise it well." Cohen attributes errors to "adventitious causes" and finds little interest in them. In his view human performance arises from an intrinsic human competence that is impeccably rational, but deviations may occur due to inattention, memory lapses, etc.

Johnson-Laird and Byrne articulate a view of rational thought that parses Cohen's distinction between  competence and performance. Stanovich says their view highlights the importance of the reflective mind. They hold that people are programmed to accept inferences as valid provided they have no mental model of the premises that contradict the inference. However, the search for contradictory models is "not governed by any systematic or comprehensive principles" (p. 165-6).

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #4

Each of us has most likely experienced our minds drifting away from what we most want to think about or do at a given time. It even happens while reading. This phenomena is briefly addressed in Rationality & the Reflective Mind.

Stanovich cites a journal article, not by him, about mind wandering. It describes mind wandering as sharing "certain similarities with standard views of controlled processing, however, there is an important difference. Controlled processing is generally associated with the intentional pursuit of a goal. Mind wandering, however, often occurs without intention....mind wandering involves executive control yet seems to lack deliberate intent."

Stanovich responds: "I would argue that what [the authors] are struggling to portray here are two different kinds of Type 2 processing. One is an attempt to exhaustively model an imaginary world that would facilitate the primary task. The other is a less computationally expensive type of cognition that proceeds successively through the most convenient and salient associate of a single (often incomplete) focal model."

It seems to me that "an imaginary world" here means to consider a hypothesis, an alternative scenario, a counterfactual, or something similar, connected with pursuit of the intended goal. The second sentence in more commonplace words seems to say "our mind drifts to something not as demanding or more fun."  

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #3

More from Keith Stanovich's Rationality & the Reflective Mind follows.

"One interesting implication that follows from the distinction between the algorithmic mind and the reflective mind is that measures of so-called "executive functioning" in the neuropsychological literature actually measure nothing of the sort. The term executive implies that these tasks assess the most strategic (often deemed the "highest") level of cognitive functioning--the reflective level. However, a consideration of the tasks most commonly used in the neuropsychological literature to assess executive functioning . . . reveals that almost without exception they are optimal performance tasks and that most of them rather severely constrain reflective level functioning" (p. 56).

Other than a couple of examples he gives, I am unfamiliar with the neuropsychological literature he refers to. So I trust that he says.

As said in my previous post, Stanovich says that IQ tests rely mainly on the algorithmic mind whereas critical thinking tests rely mainly on the reflective mind. Reflecting on my own life, my taking tests in college and actuarial exams seemed to rely mainly on my algorithmic mind, whereas my later work often called for my reflective mind. Of course, it took a lot of study and often reflection to make the the test/exam material algorithmic. The work often included goals, and/or how to achieve them, that were not well-defined, more so with time. It called for ranking the importance of multiple goals and choosing the best, or at least sufficient, way to achieve them. Doing the work therefore called upon the reflective mind. Similarly, executive level functioning in business -- but not merely there -- often calls upon the reflective mind. Moreover, the higher the executive level, the more that is the case, generally speaking. It isn't always the case, since biases can creeps in, e.g. favoritism in promotions. More responsibility and personal autonomy generally increases with promotions.

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #2

More from Keith Stanovich's Rationality & the Reflective Mind follows.

The difference between the reflective mind and algorithmic mind is captured by the distinction between intelligence tests and critical thinking tests. Psychometricians have long distinguished between typical and optimal performance situations.

Typical ones are unconstrained in that no overt instruction to maximize performance are given, and task interpretation is determined to some extent by the participant. Goals are somewhat open. The measures are of the reflective mind -- in part goal priority and epistemic regulation.

Optimal ones have the task interpretation determined externally -- not by the participant -- and the participant is instructed to maximize performance and how to do so.

All test measures of intelligence or cognitive ability are of optimal performance, whereas measures of critical or rational thinking are of typical performance.  Intelligence (IQ) tests are more constrained at the reflective level and critical thinking tests are less constrained at the reflective level. Critical thinking tests create ambiguity about what feature of the problem to rely upon -- ambiguity that is resolved differently by individuals with different epistemic dispositions. On an IQ test there would be little or no ambiguity. "Such tests attempt to constrain reflective-level functioning to isolate processing abilities at the algorithmic level of analysis. It is the efficiency of computational abilities under optimal (not typical) conditions that is the focus of IQ tests" (41).

"Many different studies . . . have indicated that measures of intelligence display only moderate to weak correlations (usually less than 0.30) with some thinking dispositions (e.g., actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition) and near zero correlations with others (e.g., conscientiousness, curiosity, diligence)" (38).

Stanovich has another book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, about this topic. I have not read it, but when I peeked at the book on Amazon there seemed to be very little about critical thinking.

Rationality & the Reflective Mind #1

Rationality & the Reflective Mind is the title of a book by Keith Stanovich. I began reading it about three weeks ago. He mentioned Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow so often that I decided to read Kahneman's book first.

Stanovich presents another dual process account of reasoning that differs from Kahneman's. Stanovich learned much from Kahneman, but has ventured beyond. He presents a tripartite theory and uses the labels Type 1 Process and Type 2 Process instead of Kahneman's labels System 1 and System 2. Type 1 is the autonomous mind. Type 2 consists of the algorithmic mind and the reflective mind.

"In my view, the defining feature of Type 1 processing is its autonomy--the execution of Type 1 processes is mandatory when their triggering stimuli are encountered, and they do not depend on input from high-level control systems" (19).  Execution is rapid and does not put a heavy load on central processing capacity. The processes tend to operate in parallel without interfering with one another or Type 2 processing.

Type 2 processing is non-autonomous. It is relatively slow and computationally expensive. Type 2 is largely serial, often language-based, and may override Type 1 processing. It prevails when decisions and judgments are called for.

He doesn't use the terms volitional and non-volitional, but these are synonyms of non-autonomous and autonomous, respectively.

The difference between the algorithmic mind and reflective mind is captured in the distinction between cognitive ability and thinking dispositions, or cognitive styles. Many thinking dispositions concern beliefs, belief structure, and attitudes toward changing beliefs. Others concern goals and goal hierarchy. Particular dispositions investigated by psychologists are: active open-minded thinking, the tendency of thinking, considering future consequences, and more. They include the following tendencies:
- to collect information before deciding
- to seek various points of view before deciding
- to calibrate strength of opinion
- to explicitly weigh pluses and minuses
- to seek nuance and avoid absolutism.

Individual differences in thinking dispositions assess goal management, epistemic values and self-regulation.

This book is a more challenging read than Kahneman's book so far. The topic of my next post --- intelligence tests and critical thinking tests -- will likely seem easier to a reader.

I give a hat tip to David Potts for mentioning this book.