Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations
Iris van Rooij, Cory Wright, Todd Wareham · Synthese · 2010
Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity $${\phi}$$ is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.