Rationality and Intelligence

Jonathan Baron

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511571275

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.

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Preface
pp vii-viii

1 - Introduction
pp 1-49

2 - Rational choices and plans
pp 50-83

3 - A theory of thinking
pp 84-129

4 - The scheme fleshed out: a decision–theoretic analysis of thinking
pp 130-167

5 - Conditions of effective thinking
pp 168-205

6 - Effects of rational thinking on the individual and society
pp 206-243

7 - The teaching of rational thinking
pp 244-279

References
pp 280-296

Index
pp 297-299

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Rationality and Intelligence

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