Reasoning is the study of a set of problems with certain (more-or-less) well-defined constraints with symbolic solutions.

An overview of ideas behind the psychology of problem solving.

Nativism and rationalism: (starts ca 400 BCE) Knowledge is inborn—Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Chomsky

Problem: Can you double a square? How do you do it?

Empiricism: (Starts ca 350 BCE) Knowledge requires experience—Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Watson,
Associationists. How can a cat get out of a problem box?

Many but not all of the associationists believed that mind must function in a mechanical way with potentially well specified laws of association of mental elements combining the elements into the larger ideas. Mayer talks of atomism, mechanism, empiricism, and imagery. Associationism including atomism, mechanism, and empiricism is still with us.

Common Sense: (ca 1730) We have built in faculties of mind which provide the answer—Reid. How do I know that a rose is ‘out there" instead of ‘in my head?

Wundt: (ca 1880). Complex mental processes must be studied through the artifacts of humans and cannot be studied directly by experiment. Experimentally one can only study components of sensation.

Külpe and the Würzburg School: (ca 1910) Experimented on complex mental processes and concluded that reasoning requires concepts such as directed thought and unconscious processes.

Gestalt and Holism: (ca 1912). Experiments in perception and problem solving. Concluded that thinking is a holistic process based on the gestalt or form of the phenomena to be reasoned about. Elements are defined in relation to their context rather than the other way around. Reasoning processes include, (re)organization, insight, autonomous processes

Information Processing: (ca 1960)—computation, input, transformation, storage, and output of information.

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