Denise D. Cummins

In Good Thinking Denise Cummings take you back to college. She is adjunct-professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She wrote The Other Side of Psychology: How Experimental Psychologists Find Out About The Way We Act. She co-editored books like Minds, Brains and Computers: The Foundations of Cognitive Science, The Evolution of Mind. Why would a psychologist label your idea a “creative insight”? What do economists mean when they refer to you as a “rational agent”? How can a philosopher still be logical while asking you to obey “moral imperatives”?
The answers are rooted in the critical-and sometimes counterintuitive-concepts that experts use to make decisions. Their methods determine whether we are guilty or innocent, where we should invest our money, and whether a drug effectively treats a particular illness.
Rational Choice: Choose what is most likely to give you what you want.
Game Theory: What to do when you’re not the only one making choices.
Moral Judgment: How do we tell the difference between right and wrong.
Scientific Reasoning, which consists of Hypothesis-testing: The search for truth by evaluating evidence; Causal Reasoning: How do we decide what causes what, how to bring about what we want, and how to prevent what we don’t want.
Logic: The search for truth through argumentation.
Problem solving: Getting what you want by searching for means towards goals and eliminating unwanted situations.
Analogy: This is like that, or the heart and soul of insight, discovery, and genius.
The book’s informative, not entertaining. After reading this book, you will know (again) how one decides, argues, and tells right from wrong. But you will also see how our “flawed” thinking can be used for the better.… (mere)