[lit-ideas] Re: Unconscious Thought

  • From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 11:01:01 -0500

"John McCreery" writes:

: On 2/27/06, Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
: 
: > This is pretty much what Peirce once wrote on the
: > habits, with few differences though. Klein, wisely in
: > my opinion, concentrates on one type of situation,
: > while Peirce was developing a more general explanatory
: > framework. Big difference however is that in the
: > Peircean explanation, people choose and compare
: > habits, while in Klein's case "they just move to next
: > one." I find the latter unsatisfactory, if the
: > soldiers model fails certainly he just doesn't move to
: > to the next one if it is the model for ordering at
: > McDonald's?
: >
: >
: 
: Teemu, you're right."Moving to the next one" isn't as casual as my
: phrasing made it sound. What's involved is a pattern recognition and
: evaluation process which moves the decider as quickly as possible to
: the next plausible model based on the evidence in hand. This still
: isn't, however, the rational choice approach of considering all
: possible models and trying to select the one which is best. It is
: choosing the first in line which (under some set of heuristics)
: suffices to account for the situation and shape a different response
: i.e., an example of what artificial intelligence/cognitive scientific
: types call satisficing as opposed to optimizing behavior.

Is the process you describe really what is normally meant by
satisficing?  I thought that satisficing involves finding a
satisfactory result and then not wasting time and resources
trying to find a better one. 

It seems to me that what you have described is more like what
experienced chess players do as contrasted with what a computer
program that "plays" chess does.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
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