4. Conclusion

We have presented just some of the advice there is to extract from Ameliorative

Psychology about how people might reason better about matters

of significance. It is easy to envision how this kind of ‘‘applied epistemology’’

might serve as the basis for an interesting critical thinking

course—one very different from the courses taught by most philosophers.

Many critical thinking texts written by philosophers seem designed to

provide students with the resources to puncture the pompous absurdities

of psychics, faith healers, and political pundits. An epistemological tradition

that took seriously its normative, reason-guiding function would

naturally suggest a different kind of critical thinking course, one that took

Ameliorative Psychology seriously. Such a course would be based on

empirical findings in psychology (e.g., Gilovich 1991, Nisbett 1993, Hastie

and Dawes 2001), as well as in negotiation (e.g., Thompson 2001) and

managerial decision making (e.g., Bazerman 2001). It would introduce

students to reasoning strategies that can help them improve their retirement

savings, that can help them increase joint outcomes in cooperative

group behavior, that can help them draw reasonable inferences from a positive

or a negative test for cancer, and that can help them safeguard their

neighborhoods from human predators.

Can such courses do any good? We don’t know, but there is reason

for hope. In a paper that found that people improved their reasoning after

formal instruction, Lehman, Lempert, and Nisbett drew the following

conclusion:

The truth is we know very little about reasoning and how to teach it. The

one thing we knew—namely, that formal discipline is an illusion—seems

clearly wrong. Just how wrong, and therefore just how much we can improve

reasoning by instruction, is now a completely open question. (1993,

335–36)

These are sobering words from a distinguished team of researchers. If they

strike philosophers as pessimistic, that is because we have assumed for too

long that our courses help people reason better without bothering to test

the assumption. When it comes to offering epistemic guidance, the prospects

for Ameliorative Psychology are good. We have plenty of evidence of

what we do wrong, and a fair bit of evidence about what we can do to

correct it. Do we have the cognitive wherewithal to appreciate the need for

those corrections? Do we have the resolve and the stamina to make them?

These are worthwhile questions. But if the answer to these questions is no,

it is not because Standard Analytic Epistemology is a better alternative.

One of the general findings we have pressed in this book is that when it

comes to matters of human and social judgment, our unaided reasoning

abilities are no match for sound, empirically-based reasoning methods. It

is high time to apply this lesson to the practice of epistemology.

We have presented just some of the advice there is to extract from Ameliorative

Psychology about how people might reason better about matters

of significance. It is easy to envision how this kind of ‘‘applied epistemology’’

might serve as the basis for an interesting critical thinking

course—one very different from the courses taught by most philosophers.

Many critical thinking texts written by philosophers seem designed to

provide students with the resources to puncture the pompous absurdities

of psychics, faith healers, and political pundits. An epistemological tradition

that took seriously its normative, reason-guiding function would

naturally suggest a different kind of critical thinking course, one that took

Ameliorative Psychology seriously. Such a course would be based on

empirical findings in psychology (e.g., Gilovich 1991, Nisbett 1993, Hastie

and Dawes 2001), as well as in negotiation (e.g., Thompson 2001) and

managerial decision making (e.g., Bazerman 2001). It would introduce

students to reasoning strategies that can help them improve their retirement

savings, that can help them increase joint outcomes in cooperative

group behavior, that can help them draw reasonable inferences from a positive

or a negative test for cancer, and that can help them safeguard their

neighborhoods from human predators.

Can such courses do any good? We don’t know, but there is reason

for hope. In a paper that found that people improved their reasoning after

formal instruction, Lehman, Lempert, and Nisbett drew the following

conclusion:

The truth is we know very little about reasoning and how to teach it. The

one thing we knew—namely, that formal discipline is an illusion—seems

clearly wrong. Just how wrong, and therefore just how much we can improve

reasoning by instruction, is now a completely open question. (1993,

335–36)

These are sobering words from a distinguished team of researchers. If they

strike philosophers as pessimistic, that is because we have assumed for too

long that our courses help people reason better without bothering to test

the assumption. When it comes to offering epistemic guidance, the prospects

for Ameliorative Psychology are good. We have plenty of evidence of

what we do wrong, and a fair bit of evidence about what we can do to

correct it. Do we have the cognitive wherewithal to appreciate the need for

those corrections? Do we have the resolve and the stamina to make them?

These are worthwhile questions. But if the answer to these questions is no,

it is not because Standard Analytic Epistemology is a better alternative.

One of the general findings we have pressed in this book is that when it

comes to matters of human and social judgment, our unaided reasoning

abilities are no match for sound, empirically-based reasoning methods. It

is high time to apply this lesson to the practice of epistemology.