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Bayesian Rationality Revisited: Integrating Order Effects

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Abstract

Bayes’ inference cannot reliably account for uncertainty in mental processes. The reason is that Bayes’ inference is based on the assumption that the order in which the relevant features are evaluated is indifferent, which is not the case in most of mental processes. Instead of Bayes’ rule, a more general, probabilistic rule of inference capable of accounting for these order effects is established. This new rule of inference can be used to improve the current Bayesian models of cognition. Moreover, it should play an essential role in the search for artificial emotional intelligence.

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Notes

  1. Reducing mental processes to brain’s activity leads to the idea that Bayesian inference “takes part of the automatic and unconscious, elementary operations of our brain” (Dehaene, 2012). According to a growing trend in theoretical neuroscience, the human perceptual system could thus be modeled as a Bayesian machine. The brain is supposed to represent sensory information probabilistically, in the form of probability distributions. This hypothesis, which presently lacks of experimental confirmation (Knill & Pouget, 2004), is only an over-interpretation of Bayesian rationalism within a reductionist materialism. It will not be examined further in this article, which focuses on the rationality of mental processes.

  2. It is supposed that the drawings are equiprobable.

  3. The numbers between brackets are the standard deviations.

  4. Indeed, the target emotional state is not totally reached by the subject. The distinction between the latter state and her real emotional state is considered in the more precise calculations of Sect. 5 and Appendix 1.

  5. The pre-ejection period is the time elapsed between the depolarization of the left ventricle and the beginning of ventricular ejection. Its value is strongly dependent on that of the volume of blood ejected by the left ventricle at each cardiac cycle.

  6. The precise calculation of the relevant commutators and probabilities for this survey will not be presented here since we essentially focus on the order effects involved in cognitive processes (and not in decision making).

  7. Also note that another characterization of this order effect has been proposed more recently by Busemeyer & Wang (2017), by referring to a so-called “ABA experiment”, where a measurement of B is inserted between two measurements of A. It shows that the second measurement of A can be different from the initial one and the degree of incompatibility of A and B can thus be evaluated from this difference. This order effect has been checked on the sequence ABA with a population of 325 participants on a wide range of 12 different set of issues.

  8. The Facial Action Coding System has been developed by the psychologists Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen in 1978. It is now the standard tool used in psycho-physiological studies of facial expression.

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  1. Associate Researcher to Laboratory CHArt, Human and Artificial Cognition, EPHE, University Paris 8, Paris, France

    Pierre Uzan

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Uzan, P. Bayesian Rationality Revisited: Integrating Order Effects. Found Sci 28, 507–528 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-022-09838-0

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