Objective: To identify problem solving strategies in general practice. Basic procedures: Three styles of scientific reasoning were defined and modelled on the medical environment. These models were tested in a simulated doctor-patient encounter.

Computer-simulated scenarios have been part of psychological research on problem solving for more than 40 years. The shift in emphasis from simple toy problems to complex, more real-life oriented problems has been accompanied by discussions about the best ways to assess the process of solving complex problems. Psychometric issues such as reliable assessments and addressing correlations with other instruments have been in the foreground of these discussions and have left the content validity of complex problem (...) class='Hi'>solving in the background. In this paper, we return the focus to content issues and address the important features that define complex problems. (shrink)

The general thesis that science is essentially a problem-solving activity is extended to the development of new fields. Their development represents a research strategy for generating and solving new unsolved problems and solving existing ones in related fields. The pattern of growth of new fields is guided by the central problems within the field and applicable problems in other fields. Proponents of existing research traditions welcome work in new fields, if they believe it will increase the (...) problem-solving effectiveness of their tradition. Correspondingly, researchers in new fields will graft their work onto established traditions, if they believe it will augment the problem-solving effectiveness of their work. The above claims are defended through using the development of paleomagnetism as a case study. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi To solve a problem such as wars between nations and civil wars it is necessary to discover what causes the problem.

Multiple theories of problem-solving hypothesize that there are distinct qualitative phases exhibited during effective problem-solving. However, limited research has attempted to identify when transitions between phases occur. We integrate theory on collaborative problem-solving with dynamical systems theory suggesting that when a system is undergoing a phase transition it should exhibit a peak in entropy and that entropy levels should also relate to team performance. Communications from 40 teams that collaborated on a complex problem (...) were coded for occurrence of problem-solving processes. We applied a sliding window entropy technique to each team's communications and specified criteria for identifying data points that qualify as peaks and determining which peaks were robust. We used multilevel modeling, and provide a qualitative example, to evaluate whether phases exhibit distinct distributions of communication processes. We also tested whether there was a relationship between entropy values at transition points and CPS performance. We found that a proportion of entropy peaks was robust and that the relative occurrence of communication codes varied significantly across phases. Peaks in entropy thus corresponded to qualitative shifts in teams’ CPS communications, providing empirical evidence that teams exhibit phase transitions during CPS. Also, lower average levels of entropy at the phase transition points predicted better CPS performance. We specify future directions to improve understanding of phase transitions during CPS, and collaborative cognition, more broadly. (shrink)

Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailorshop and MicroDYN, are presented to illustrate the concept by means of their measurement devices. Also, the relation of complex cognition (...) and emotion in the CPS context is discussed. The question if CPS requires complex cognition is answered with a tentative “yes.”. (shrink)

According to the restructuring hypothesis, insight problem solving typically progresses through consecutive stages of search, impasse, insight, and search again for someone, who solves the task. The order of these stages was determined through self-reports of problem solvers and has never been verified behaviorally. We asked whether individual analysis of problem solving attempts of participants revealed the same order of problem solving stages as defined by the theory and whether their subjective feelings corresponded (...) to the problem solving stages they were in. Our participants tried to solve the Five-Square problem in an online task, while we recorded the time and trajectory of their stick movements. After the task they were asked about their feelings related to insight and some of them also had the possibility of reporting impasse while working on the task. We found that the majority of participants did not follow the classic four-stage model of insight, but had more complex sequences of problem solving stages, with search and impasse recurring several times. This means that the classic four-stage model is not sufficient to describe variability on the individual level. We revised the classic model and we provide a new model that can generate all sequences found. Solvers reported insight more often than non-solvers and non-solvers reported impasse more often than solvers, as expected; but participants did not report impasse more often during behaviorally defined impasse stages than during other stages. This shows that impasse reports might be unreliable indicators of impasse. Our study highlights the importance of individual analysis of problem solving behavior to verify insight theory. (shrink)

Integrative systems biology is an emerging field that attempts to integrate computation, applied mathematics, engineering concepts and methods, and biological experimentation in order to model large-scale complex biochemical networks. The field is thus an important contemporary instance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. Interdisciplinary science is a recent topic in the philosophy of science. Determining what is philosophically important and distinct about interdisciplinary practices requires detailed accounts of problem-solving practices that attempt to understand how specific (...) practices address the challenges and constraints of interdisciplinary research in different contexts. In this paper we draw from our 5-year empirical ethnographic study of two systems biology labs and their collaborations with experimental biologists to analyze a significant problem-solving approach in ISB, which we call adaptive problem solving. ISB lacks much of the methodological and theoretical resources usually found in disciplines in the natural sciences, such as methodological frameworks that prescribe reliable model-building processes. Researchers in our labs compensate for the lack of these and for the complexity of their problems by using a range of heuristics and experimenting with multiple methods and concepts from the background fields available to them. Using these resources researchers search out good techniques and practices for transforming intractable problems into potentially solvable ones. The relative freedom lab directors grant their researchers to explore methodological options and find good practices that suit their problems is not only a response to the complex interdisciplinary nature of the specific problem, but also provides the field itself with an opportunity to discover more general methodological approaches and develop theories of biological systems. Such developments in turn can help to establish the field as an identifiably distinct and successful approach to understanding biological systems. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw attention to two problems that Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting faces. I propose that a single word change can solve both.

Problem Solving Technologies provides a user friendly understanding of technological objects including what they are and how the function in our lives.

The aim of this paper is to describe the way in which argumentative patterns come into being in plenary debate over legislative issues in the European Parliament. What kind of argumentative patterns are to be expected within this macro context? It is shown that the argumentative patterns that come into being in legislative debate in the European Parliament depend for the most part on the problem-solving argumentation that is put forward in the opening speech by the rapporteur of (...) the parliamentary committee report. This argumentation can be pragmatic problem-solving argumentation or complex problem-solving argumentation. The most important prototypical argumentative patterns are investigated in the argumentation put forward by the Members of parliament. This investigation is based on an inventory of the arguments that can in principle be used to support or attack the initial problem-solving argumentation put forward by the rapporteur. (shrink)

This book presents stipulated definitions, essays, ontological arguments and logic used to determine necessary basic assumptions of right and wrong, culminating in a practical procedure based upon the Universal Law that can permit everyone to eliminate misconceptions, avoid destructive interpretations, and develop an ethical conscience.

Pluralism has many meanings. An assessment of the need for logical pluralism with respect to scientific knowledge requires insights in its domain of application. So first a specific form of epistemic pluralism will be defended. Knowledge turns out a patchwork of knowledge chunks. These serve descriptive as well as evaluative functions, may have competitors within the knowledge system, interact with each other, and display a characteristic dynamics caused by new information as well as by mutual readjustment. Logics play a role (...) in the organization of the chunks, in their applications and in the exchange of information between them. Epistemic pluralism causes a specific form of logical pluralism. Against this background, the occurrence of inconsistencies will be discussed together with required reactions and systematic ways to explicate them. Finally, the place of inconsistencies in the sciences will be considered. Seven theses will be proposed and argued for. The implications of each of these for pluralism will be considered. The general tenet is that paraconsistency plays an important role, bound to become more explicit in the future, but that the occurrence of inconsistencies does not basically affect the need for pluralism. (shrink)

Starting from the Italian results of the PISA 2015 surveys as regards the competence of young students in collaborative problem-solving, in this paper we conduct a critical analysis of the concept of competence, as seen through the lens of the Capability Approach. The Philosophy for Children curriculum is presented as a pedagogical and didactic proposal capable of re-conceptualizing the constructs of ‘problem-solving’ and ‘collaboration’. In the light of ‘Complex Thinking’ theory and the ‘community of inquiry’ classroom (...) methodology, the general theoretical frame of the PISA and DeSeCo approach to problem-solving has been criticized for its focus on what has been defined in terms of “internal mental structures in the sense of abilities, dispositions or resources embedded in the individual”. The proposal of Philosophy for Children and its ‘community of inquiry’ methodology are considered and discussed. This educational curriculum provides a real opportunity to rethink citizenship education by concentrating on the value and power of collective agency and the ability to wonder about our world. The pedagogical implications are significant because this means that we should be aiming to align academic education not with what society is, but with what it could or should be. To achieve this, education policies and planning actions need to focus on values and principles, on matters such as freedom, social equity and participation. These matters are not exclusive to the realms of individual endowment and performance. They have fundamental ethical and cultural components. Philosophy for Children can be considered as an opportunity to work towards the educational and political goal of creating “flourishing communities”. (shrink)

This timely volume explores pressing questions that relate to democracy and the politics of knowledge, in a dialogue based on developing and applying philosophies that stress the importance of dialogue, democracy and criticism.

Experimental research by social and cognitive psychologists has established that cooperative groups solve a wide range of problems better than individuals. Cooperative problem solving groups of scientific researchers, auditors, financial analysts, air crash investigators, and forensic art experts are increasingly important in our complex and interdependent society. This comprehensive textbook--the first of its kind in decades--presents important theories and experimental research about group problem solving. The book focuses on tasks that have demonstrably correct solutions within mathematical, (...) logical, scientific, or verbal systems, including algebra problems, analogies, vocabulary, and logical reasoning problems.The book explores basic concepts in group problem solving, social combination models, group memory, group ability and world knowledge tasks, rule induction problems, letters-to-numbers problems, evidence for positive group-to-individual transfer, and social choice theory. The conclusion proposes ten generalizations that are supported by the theory and research on group problem solving. Group Problem Solving is an essential resource for decision-making research in social and cognitive psychology, but also extremely relevant to multidisciplinary and multicultural problem-solving teams in organizational behavior, business administration, management, and behavioral economics. (shrink)

In the movie The Gold Rush Charlie Chaplin and his friend are stranded in a log cabin in the middle of winter while a blizzard rages. The cabin is isolated, and they have a very big problem – there is nothing to eat. They pace around wondering what to do. Charlie's friend starts to see Charlie as a chicken, and he tries to kill him. He chases Charlie around the cabin many times. Eventually they hit upon the idea of (...) boiling an old boot and eating it for dinner. With great delicacy they sit at the table and eat the boot as if it were a gourmet meal. They solved the problem of having nothing to eat. While their solution to the problem did not result in a culinary feast, this example reveals two crucial features of problem solving. First, a problem exists when a goal must be achieved and the solution is not immediately obvious. Second, problem solving often involves attempting different ways to solve the problem. Put more formally, a problem has four components. First, there is an initial state. This is the person's state of knowledge at the start of a problem. Second, there is the goal state: the goal that the person wishes to achieve. Third are the actions or operations that the problem‐solver can use to get to the goal state. Fourth is the task environment that the solver is working in. The task environment consists of the features of the physical environment that can either directly or indirectly constrain or suggest different ways of solving a problem. I will sketch out the main currents of thinking in research in this area, beginning by reviewing the history of research on problem solving and then focusing on a number of important issues in problem‐solving research. Finally, I will give an overview of some recent developments. (shrink)

Learning to solve a class of problems can be characterized as a search through a space of hypotheses about the rules for solving these problems. A series of four experiments studied how different learning conditions affected the search among hypotheses about the solution rule for a simple computational problem. Experiment 1 showed that a problem property such as computational difficulty of the rules biased the search process and so affected learning. Experiment 2 examined the impact of examples (...) as instructional tools and found that their effectiveness was determined by whether they uniquely pointed to the correct rule. Experiment 3 compared verbal directions with examples and found that both could guide search. The final experiment tried to improve learning by using more explicit verbal directions or by adding scaffolding to the example. While both manipulations improved learning, learning still took the form of a search through a hypothesis space of possible rules. We describe a model that embodies two assumptions: the instruction can bias the rules participants hypothesize rather than directly be encoded into a rule; participants do not have memory for past wrong hypotheses and are likely to retry them. These assumptions are realized in a Markov model that fits all the data by estimating two sets of probabilities. First, the learning condition induced one set of Start probabilities of trying various rules. Second, should this first hypothesis prove wrong, the learning condition induced a second set of Choice probabilities of considering various rules. These findings broaden our understanding of effective instruction and provide implications for instructional design. (shrink)

Text and photographs describe the lives of deer, including their feeding, breeding, and defense behavior.

Recent research on human problem solving has largely focused on laboratory tasks that do not demand from the subject much prior, task‐related information. This study seeks to extend the theory of human problem solving to semantically richer domains that are characteristic of professional problem solving. We discuss the behavior of a single subject solving problems in chemical engineering thermodynamics. We use as a protocol‐encoding device a computer program called SAPA which also doubles as (...) a theory of the subject's problem‐solving behavior. The subject made extensive use of means‐ends analysis, similar to that observed in semantically less rich domains, supplemented by recognition mechanisms for accessing information in semantic memory. (shrink)

In adversarial problem solving (APS), one must anticipate, understand and counteract the actions of an opponent. Military strategy, business, and game playing all require an agent to construct a model of an opponent that includes the opponent's model of the agent. The cognitive mechanisms required for such modeling include deduction, analogy, inductive generalization, and the formation and evaluation of explanatory hypotheses. Explanatory coherence theory captures part of what is involved in APS, particularly in cases involving deception.

Most psychological theories of problem solving have focused on modeling explicit processes that gradually bring the solver closer to the solution in a mostly explicit and deliberative way. This approach to problem solving is typically inefficient when the problem is too complex, ill-understood, or ambiguous. In such a case, a ‘creative’ approach to problem solving might be more appropriate. In the present paper, we propose a computational psychological model implementing the Explicit-Implicit Interaction theory (...) of creative problem solving that involves integrating the results of implicit and explicit processing. In this paper, the new model is used to simulate insight in creative problem solving and the overshadowing effect. (shrink)

How well can we explain natural occurrences of cognitive behaviours given the theoretical frameworks available to us today? The thesis explores what has to be assumed in cognitive theory in order to provide such an explanation, in contrast to being able to predict behaviour under controlled circumstances. The behaviours considered are all of the type described as involving higher level cognition or being representation hungry. Examples are problem solving and certain types of decision-making. Three different theoretical frameworks are (...) examined: general theories such as Newell and Simon’s Universal Problem Solver, the stances sometimes referred to as “situated cognition,” particularly those that try to exclude cognitive components from their explanatory framework ; and domain-specific theories of cognition. The last category can broadly be separated into two different types of theories: those who claim that specialised cognitive processes are activated through situational features and those who claim that specialised cognitive processes are successful relative such features. The conclusion is that none of the stances are sufficient on their own. The proposed solution is instead to take both the hypothesised domain-specific process and the information it utilises into account. If we allow for “high-quality” information of a more domain-general nature, that indicates which parts of the current situation are important, or makes it possible for the individual to assume certain relations in advance, then this information can account for parts of the flexibility and stability required of the cognitive processes. Examples of such information are causal relations and epistemic information connected to social information. Since these point us to how the features of the situation at hand were produced, they help us identify relevant aspects of, and relations between different situations. By utilising high-quality information, domain-specific processes can be made broader, and less specialised, while keeping a close tie to the situations in which they are active. In this way we can begin to explain real life cognitive behaviours. (shrink)

Instructions in Wason’s Selection Task underdetermine empirical subjects’ representation of the underlying problem, and its admissible solutions. We model the Selection Task as an interrogative learning problem, and reasoning to solutions as: selection of a representation of the problem; and: strategic planning from that representation. We argue that recovering Wason’s ‘normative’ selection is possible only if both stages are constrained further than they are by Wason’s formulation. We conclude comparing our model with other explanatory models, w.r.t. to (...) empirical adequacy, and modeling of bounded rationality. (shrink)

This timely volume explores pressing questions that relate to democracy and the politics of knowledge, in a dialogue based on developing and applying philosophies that stress the importance of dialogue, democracy and criticism.

This paper presents an analysis of emotional and affectively toned discourse in biomedical engineering researchers’ accounts of their problem solving practices. Drawing from our interviews with scientists in two laboratories, we examine three classes of expression: explicit, figurative and metaphorical, and attributions of emotion to objects and artifacts important to laboratory practice. We consider the overall function of expressions in the particular problem solving contexts described. We argue that affective processes are engaged in problem (...) class='Hi'>solving, not as simply tacked onto reasoning but as integral to it. The examples we present illustrate the close relation of emotion to problem solving and experimentation; they also implicate social and cultural dimensions of emotion expression. The analysis underscores a need to consider emotional expression to be intimately and importantly tied to the cognitive achievements and social negotiations of laboratory practices. (shrink)

In the course of daily life we solve problems often enough that there is a special term to characterize the activity and the right to expect a scientific theory to explain its dynamics. The classical view in psychology is that to solve a problem a subject must frame it by creating an internal representation of the problem‘s structure, usually called a problem space. This space is an internally generable representation that is mathematically identical to a graph structure (...) with nodes and links. The nodes can be annotated with useful information, and the whole representation can be distributed over internal and external structures such as symbolic notations on paper or diagrams. If the representation is distributed across internal and external structures the subject must be able to keep track of activity in the distributed structure. Problem solving proceeds as the subject works from an initial state in this mentally supported space, actively construction possible solution paths, evaluating them and heuristically choosing the best. Control of this exploratory process is not well understood, as it is not always systematic, but various heuristic search algorithms have been proposed and some experimental support has been provided for them. (shrink)

According to Zagzebski, understanding something is justified by the exercise of cognitive skills and intellectual virtues the knower possesses. Zagzebski develops her view by suggesting that “understanding has internalist conditions for success”. Against this view, Grimm raises an objection: what justifies understanding is the reliability of the processes by which we come to understand, and we need not be aware of the outcome of all reliable processes. Understanding is no exception, so, given that understanding something results from reliable processes, we (...) need not always be aware of what we understand. I reply to Grimm’s objection; I argue that Zagzebski’s internalist requirement is best conceived as accessibility to conscious reflection. The accessibility condition is satisfied because understanding solves problems on the knower’s research agenda. And whenever problem-solving is non-trivial, the knower needs to reflect on what the best solving strategy is. (shrink)

The question that is the subject of this article is not intended to be a sociological or statistical question about the practice of today’s mathematicians, but a philosophical question about the nature of mathematics, and specifically the method of mathematics. Since antiquity, saying that mathematics is problem solving has been an expression of the view that the method of mathematics is the analytic method, while saying that mathematics is theorem proving has been an expression of the view that (...) the method of mathematics is the axiomatic method. In this article it is argued that these two views of the mathematical method are really opposed. In order to answer the question whether mathematics is problem solving or theorem proving, the article retraces the Greek origins of the question and Hilbert’s answer. Then it argues that, by Gödel’s incompleteness results and other reasons, only the view that mathematics is problem solving is tenable. (shrink)

A study is reported which focused on the problem-solving strategies employed by expert electronics engineers pursuing a real-world task: integrated-circuit design. Verbal protocol data were analysed so as to reveal aspects of the organisation and sequencing of ongoing design activity. These analyses indicated that the designers were implementing a highly systematic solution-development strategy which deviated only a small degree from a normatively optimal top-down and breadth-first method. Although some of the observed deviation could be described as opportunistic in (...) nature, much of it reflected the rapid depth-first exploration of tentative solution ideas. We argue that switches from a predominantly breadth-first mode of problem solving to depth-first or opportunistic modes may be an important aspect of the expert's strategic knowledge about how to conduct the design process effectively when faced with difficulties, uncertainties, and design impasses. (shrink)

According to the diversity-beats-ability theorem, groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers. We argue that the model introduced by Lu Hong and Scott Page is inadequate for exploring the trade-off between diversity and ability. This is because the model employs an impoverished implementation of the problem-solving task. We present a new version of the model which captures the role of ‘ability’ in a meaningful way, and use it to explore the trade-offs (...) between diversity and ability in scientific problem solving. (shrink)

A general model of problem‐solving processes based on misconception elimination is presented to simulate both impasses and solving processes. The model operates on goal‐related rules and a set of constraint rules in the form of “if (state or goal), do not (Action)” for the explicit constraints in the instructions and the implicit constraints that come from misconceptions of legal moves. When impasses occur, a constraint elimination mechanism is applied. Because successive eliminations of implicit constraints enlarge the (...) class='Hi'>problem space and have an effect on planning, the model integrates “plan‐based” and “constraint‐based” approaches to problem‐solving behavior.Simulating individual protocols of Tower of Hanoi situations shows that the model, which has a proper set of constraints, predicts a single move with no alternative on about 61% of the movements and that protocols are quite successfully simulated movement by movement. Finally, it is shown that many features of previous models are embedded in the constraint elimination model. (shrink)

Behavior that solves a problem is distinguished by the fact that it changes another part of the solver's behavior and is strengthened when it does so. Problem solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli. Verbal responses produce especially useful stimuli, because they affect other people. As a culture formulates maxims, laws, grammar, and science, its members behave more effectively without direct or prolonged contact with the contingencies thus formulated. The culture solves problems for its members, and (...) does so by transmitting the verbal discriminative stimuli called rules. Induction, deduction, and the construction of models are ways of producing rules. Behavior that solves a problem may result from direct shaping by contingencies or from rules constructed either by the problem solver or by others. Because different controlling variables are involved, contingency-shaped behavior is never exactly like rule-governed behavior. The distinction must take account of a system which establishes certain contingencies of reinforcement, such as some part of the natural environment, a piece of equipment, or a verbal community; the behavior shaped and maintained by these contingencies; rules, derived from the contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences, and the behavior occasioned by the rules. (shrink)

Any part of the world can be viewed and modelled in terms of its chosen qualitative and/or quantitative properties, OR its structure. The former approach has been used by nearly the whole of ‘human intellectual endeavor’, i.e conventional science of physics, the arts etc. Development of the latter or the ‘systemic view’ is the subject matter of the current work. The Purpose of Change is Problem Solving suggests that the ‘structural view’ is empirical, pervasive throughout experience and as (...) such results in a single domain as opposed to conventional science which consists of many domains like mechanics, electricity etc. Thus, a unique approach is required which is based on ‘general principles of systems’ translated into operational form by the symbolism of processed natural language called ‘linguistic modelling of scenarios’ which can carry mathematics and uncertainties. To model scenarios with complex structure, a description or story in natural language is expressed in terms of homogenous language of one – and two – place sentences, the ‘elementary constituents’ of which complex structures can be constructed [like a variety of buildings from bricks]. To correspond to the single domain, based on the logic of causation, a single scheme of ‘Management/producers – Product – User/consumer’ is proposed which is immediately applicable to structuring scenarios and guides their detailed linguistic modelling or design. The approach, subject to debate, can have significant impact on society and education, especially that of engineering which lacks a ‘comprehensive theory of structure’ of problematic scenarios. (shrink)

When asked to explain their solutions to a problem, both adults and children gesture as they talk. These gestures at times convey information that is not conveyed in speech and thus reveal thoughts that are distinct from those revealed in speech. In this study, we use the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle to validate the claim that gesture and speech taken together can reflect the activation of two cognitive strategies within a single response. The Tower of Hanoi is a (...) well‐studied puzzle, known to be most efficiently solved by activating subroutines at theoretically defined choice points. When asked to explain how they solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, both adults and children produced significantly more gesture‐speech mismatches—explanations in which speech conveyed one path and gesture another—at these theoretically defined choice points than they produced at non‐choice points. Even when the participants did not solve the problem efficiently, gesture could be used to indicate where the participants were deciding between alternative paths. Gesture can, thus, serve as a useful adjunct to speech when attempting to discover cognitive processes in problem‐solving. (shrink)

Complex problem solving (CPS) and related topics such as dynamic decision-making (DDM) and complex dynamic control (CDC) represent multifaceted psychological phenomena. In a broad sense, CPS encompasses learning, decision-making, and acting in complex and dynamic situations. Moreover, solutions to problems that people face in such situations are often generated in teams or groups. In turn, this adds another layer of complexity to the situation itself because of the emerging issues that arise from the social dynamics of group interactions. (...) This framing of CPS means that it is not a single construct that can be measured by using a particular type of CPS task (e.g. minimal complex system tests), which is a view taken by the psychometric community. The proposed approach taken here is that because CPS is multifaceted, multiple approaches need to be taken to fully capture and understand what it is and how the different cognitive processes associated with it complement each other. (shrink)

People are often inaccurate in their predictions of performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. We tested whether receptivity to bullshit – the tendency to perceive meaningless statements as profound – would relate to the accuracy of metacognitive judgments on several problem-solving tasks. Individuals who were highly receptive to bullshit were less accurate in their predictions of performance on creative problem-solving tasks, but not on verbal analogy or recall tasks. Further, individuals with high BS receptivity were (...) less able to discriminate between solvable and unsolvable problems when making metacognitive judgments. These findings support the possibility that the tendency to perceive semantic connections where none exist, as indicated by high bullshit receptivity, may lead to inaccurate predictions of performance on tasks that require noticing and utilizing distant semantic connections. (shrink)

An intuitive and appealing way to characterize problem solving is as the application of constraints which reduce the problem-solution space. Any advantage offered by interdisciplinary problem solving would then plausi- bly derive from the integration of constraints from the fields involved. We propose an account of interdisciplinary problem solving which treats the integration of constraints as an iterative process. Appealing to a general- ization of entity-activity dualism from mechanical explanation, we extend the accounts (...) of Bechtel and of Craver to non-hierarchical, non-life-science, interdisciplinary problem-solving. Integration of disciplines occurs at the level of fields and their explanatory frameworks. (shrink)