Rationality and Intelligence

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jul 7, 2005 - Psychology - 308 pages
What is intelligence? Can it be increased by teaching? If so, how, and what difference would an increase make? Before we can answer these questions, we need to clarify them. Jonathan Baron argues that when we do so we find that intelligence has much to do with rational thinking, and that the skills involved in rational thinking are in fact teachable, at least to some extent. Rationality and Intelligence develops and justifies a prescriptive theory of rational thinking in terms of utility theory and the theory of rational life plans. The prescriptive theory, buttressed by other assumptions, suggests that people generally think too little and in a way that is insufficiently critical of the initial possibilities that occur to them. However these biases can be - and sometimes are - corrected by education.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Rational choices and plans
50
Utility theory as a descriptive model
67
Is conformity to utility theory required?
75
a decisiontheoretic analysis
130
Conditions of effective thinking
168
Effects of rational thinking on the individual and society
206
The teaching of rational thinking
244
References
280
Index
297
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