An Alternative to the Proof Paradigm for Ground-Level Rationality

In Chapter 5, the author uses the clues from previous chapters to begin the construction of a theory of epistemic rationality in which mistake-correcting reasoning is the paradigm for reasoning. On his account, cognitive models are composed of scenarios, which are themselves sets of propositions that have expectations for experience. Models are tested not by propositions describing experience but by experiences themselves because scenarios holistically generate expectations for experience which the agent’s actual experience can either satisfy or fail to satisfy. On the author’s theory, only scenarios with full or partial necessitation hypotheses can earn rational confidence. He identifies two main conceptual frameworks, the ordinary object framework and the person framework, both of which are causal frameworks. The imagination plays a crucial role in rationality in the author’s theory. He ends with informal statements of two principles of epistemic rationality, of which the formal versions are stated in Appendix A.