RATIONALITY IS HARD WORK - AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE DISRUPTIVE EFFECTS OF THINKING ABOUT REASONS

Recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. indicates that a conseq uence of asking subjects to reflect on their attitudes is that they no t only reduce the consistency between their attitudes and behavior, bu t they perform actions which they come to regret. Wilson interprets th is work via intra-psychic concepts, and arrives at the conclusion that it is rational to avoid deliberating about a wide range of attitudes and behaviors. This consequence has objectionable implications for phi losophical theories of deliberative practical rationality. I respond t o this challenge by reinterpreting the experimental results in a way w hich is not only consistent with a certain theory of deliberative prac tical rationality but in which the results lend support to that theory . My interpretive focus is on attending closely to the social circumst ances of subjects in the experiments[1].