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Feasible Inferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Christopher Cherniak
Christopher Cherniak*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Tufts University
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Abstract

A philosophically important but largely overlooked cognitive theory is examined, one that provides information on which inferences an agent will make from his beliefs. Such a theory of feasible inferences is indispensable in a complete cognitive psychology, in particular, for predicting the agent's actions on the basis of rationality conditions and attributed beliefs and desires. However, very little of the feasibility theory which applies to a typical human being can be shown a priori to apply to all agents. The logical competence required of a rational agent seems to have a cluster structure: it cannot be the case that an agent is able to make no inferences, but an agent can be unable to make any particular one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1981 , pp. 248 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank Charles Chihara, William Craig, Daniel Dennett, and Barry Stroud for their generous help. Drafts of this paper were read at the Logic and Methodology Colloquium of the University of California, Berkeley, 1976, and at the 1978 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Boston. Much of the material in this paper was presented, in somewhat different form, in Cherniak (1977).

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