The psychology of reasoning / by W.B. Pillsbury.

  • Walter Bowers Pillsbury
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of reasoning / by W.B. Pillsbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tory. Reasoning wonld be exhibited, too, when a soldier made use of his firearm to provide a splint for a wounded companion in a way that he had not been previously drilled to use it. Here a familiar stimulus or object elicits a new response. These two applications of reasoning are at first sight rather widely divergent. If closely analyzed, however, they are seen to be very much alike. Each is marked by the new appli- cation of an old experience; each, too, results in an adequate solution of the problem presented, or in a solution believed to be adequate should occasion arise for its practical application. Each, too, is distinguished from other ideas or other actions only by these two features, or by a combination of these two features. Random ideas, like random actions, are new but since not true or not adequate at the moment are not said to be rational. On the other hand, recalled ideas and habits are usually adequate, but are not new, and hence are not classed as reason- ing. The only fundamental distinction between the two forms is that one is an idea, the other a movement or series of movements. Even this distinction ceases to be of importance when one considers that the ideas that are designated
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