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326 FISCHER
Effortless processes also tend to be executed more rapidly than effortful processes.
Effortlessness is widely used for an operational definition of ‘automatic’ processes, more
generally (Evans 2008). In social psychology, cognitive processes that are rapid, effortless,
unconscious, and non-intentional are called ‘spontaneous’ (Uleman et al. 2008).
Many fully automatic processes get routinely or continually carried out in sense-perception or
language-comprehension, even in the absence of specific tasks set. These are known as
natural processes (Tversky and Kahneman 1983). For example: In a modest sense of the
term, ‘recognition’ is automatically assessed by a natural process – when hearing a name or
seeing a person we cannot help having a gut feeling about whether we have encountered this
name or person before (regardless of whether we recall where and when). Judgment
heuristics are simple strategies for obtaining answers to a variety of questions (Which of two
cities is bigger? Which of two players is more successful? etc.) from such ‘natural’ or ‘basic
assessments’ that are generated by natural processes (Tversky and Kahneman 1983,
Kahneman 2011).
Judgment heuristics work where the outcomes of natural processes are correlated with true
answers to a question. By and large, bigger cities and more successful athletes receive more
media attention, so we are more likely to have encountered their names before. Hence, in
game shows and elsewhere, it makes good sense to employ this recognition heuristic (here in
a simple version for paired choices): If you recognise one of two objects (cities, athletes, etc.)
but not the other, judge that the recognised object has the higher value (is bigger, more
successful, etc.) (Goldstein and Gigerenzer 2002).
To support the hypothesis that thinkers actually use a particular such strategy in largely
automatic – and unconscious – cognition, psychologists derive from it surprising fallacies or
effects, and reproduce these in behavioural experiments. The recognition heuristic, e.g.,
predicts that under certain conditions subjects who possess less relevant information than
others will make more correct judgments, and such less-is-more effects were reproduced in
striking experiments (op. cit.).
Chronometric and multi-tasking studies suggest the application of judgment heuristics is
effortless and rapid (De Neys 2006, Pachur and Hertwig 2006, Volz et al. 2006): Apparently
participants first apply the pertinent heuristic in an effortless and rapid process, and some of
them then correct the outcome, where necessary, in a further, effortful step which takes a few
seconds and falls by the wayside under the pressures of multi-tasking (Kahneman and
Frederick 2005, Kahneman 2011).
Intuitive judgments are frequently in need of justification, e.g., when they are inconsistent
with common-sense-convictions, scientific findings, or other intuitions (of the same or other
subjects). As I have shown in detail elsewhere, philosophers often accept such paradoxical or
otherwise justification-needy intuitions without argument, or at any rate without any noncircular
argument (Fischer 2011). Where this happens, they are justified in accepting an
intuition precisely to the extent to which this intuition has probative force, i.e., precisely to
the extent to which the mere fact that a given thinker has this intuition speaks for its truth.
Heuristic-based explanations of intuitive judgments help us determine whether a thinker’s
intuitions have such force. Negatively, such an explanation can reveal that the intuition
explained is constitutive of a cognitive illusion – which has no probative force. Positively, it
can reveal that the intuition explained is due to the exercise of an ‘epistemic virtue’. One
prominent proposal conceives of such virtues as cognitive competencies ‘to discriminate the
true from the false reliably (enough) in some subfield of ... propositional contents’ (Sosa
2007: 58). The following proposal allows for epistemic virtues that equip us for many but not
all relevant judgments, and are manifest in responses beyond mere true-false judgments: To
possess an epistemic virtue, I suggest, is to be competent to offer true or accurate judgments