Beyond Rationality: The Search for Wisdom in a Troubled Time [Hardcover]

Kenneth R. Hammond (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195311744 | ISBN-13: 978-0195311747 | Publication Date: January 4, 2007 | Edition: 1

With Beyond Rationality, Kenneth R. Hammond, one of the most respected and experienced experts in judgment and decision-making, sums up his life's work and persuasively argues that decisions should be based on balance and pragmatism rather than rigid ideologies.

Hammond has long focused on the dichotomy between theories of correspondence, whereby arguments correspond with reality, and coherence, whereby arguments strive to be internally consistent. He has persistently proposed a middle approach that draws from both of these modes of thought and so avoids the blunders of either extreme. In this volume, Hammond shows how particular ways of thinking that are common in the political process have led to the mistaken judgments that created our current political crisis. He illustrates this argument by analyzing penetrating case studies emphasizing the political consequences that arise when decision makers consciously or unconsciously ignore their adversaries' particular mode of thought. These analyses range from why Kennedy and Khruschev misunderstood each other to why Colin Powell erred in his judgments over the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For anyone concerned about the current state of politics in the U.S. and where it will lead us, Beyond Rationality is required reading.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this rich and rewarding work Ken Hammond has further developed and fleshed out the major themes of his previous seminal work, Human Judgment and Social Policy. Beyond Rationality provides a stream of fresh and up-to-the-minute insights into the way in which failure to accept the need for appropriately balanced oscillation between correspondent-focused intuition and coherence-focused analysis perpetuates death, destruction, misery and poor decisions at all levels. Those academic schools, as well as political and religious empires, which insist on privileging a particular cognitive strategy (coherence or correspondence) while predominantly using (or abusing) a particular cognitive tactic (analysis or intuition) emerge as the twin obstacles to the humble wisdom required in an age of irreducible uncertainty." --Jack Dowie, Emeritus Professor of Health Impact Analysis, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

"Rationality is a difficult, if not impossible, concept with which to judge people's actions. And yet, we all need some concepts of rationality to guide our behavior. In this fascinating book, Ken Hammond goes beyond rationality to discuss the essence of wisdom by using findings and concepts from basic research on judgment and decision making. There is much wisdom in this volume that elucidates and extends notions of rational behavior." --Robin M. Hogarth, Department of Economics & Business, ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

"Blink or think? Intuition or reason? Drawing heavily on 50 years of scientific research on judgment and decision making, Hammond demonstrates the necessity of both styles of thought. The truly wise among us, he observes, are those with the mental agility to adaptively tailor our thinking style to the problem at hand. Obvious? It must not be, given the seemingly never ending tug-of-war between adherents of cool reason and gut intuition. Hammond's theory of wisdom couldn't come at a better time to a world where success and failure are increasingly defined by how well we cope with uncertainty." --Alex Kirlik, Professor of Human Factors, Industrial Engineering, and Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"We all make decisions, and we hope that they are wise ones. In Beyond Rationality Ken Hammond guides us on the journey from rationalism and romanticism to wisdom. He draws on psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and politics to give us insight not only into our own judgment processes, but also into those of great thinkers throughout our history. With insightful and incisive style, Hammond translates scholarly research into everyday language. He takes the strategies and tactics of judgment and decision-making theory and demonstrates how readers can use them in the search for wisdom in a troubled time." --Kathleen Mosier, Chair, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University

About the Author

Kenneth R. Hammond is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Former Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making, he is the author of Judgments Under Stress (OUP, 1999), Human Judgment and Social Policy (OUP, 1996) and editor of The Essential Brunswik (OUP, 2001).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (January 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195311744
• ISBN-13: 978-0195311747
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,758,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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