>But we still have no idea how we get from brain biology to rational (and irrational) thought. I'd be excited if we solved this within my lifetime. The problem

>But we still have no idea how we get from brain biology to rational (and irrational) thought. I'd be excited if we solved this within my lifetime. The problem there is that "rational" has dual meanings: * The a priori kind of "rational", as in "optimal according to some equation", where that equation is often Bayesian or RL-related * The a posteriori kind of "rational", where we decide that science and math are better than intuition and so on. I pretty much support the Bayesian brain assumption, and the labs I work with follow it in a few different forms, but I suspect that the cognitive science of rationality will some day be a pretty fruitful field. That is, I suspect that a posteriori rationality can't be neatly reduced to a priori optimality[1]. [1] -- http://www.saet.illinois.edu/papers_and_talks/event-07/nolearn270312.pdf http://www.saet.illinois.edu/papers_and_talks/event-07/nolea...