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The authors offer a multiplicative model that provides a comprehensive framework to place the main findings of the volume. The model is based on the standard ‘expected utility maximization’ model of the economists, which can be applied for understanding election outcomes. The idea is that the voter weights the utility of a given policy by the probability of its being implemented, sums this across the different policies, and then votes for whichever party gives the greatest expected utility. However, Heath, Jowell, and Curtice emphasize the fact that the rational choice model needs to be expanded to include some of the ‘non‐rational’ processes observed in their research such as the possibility that voters’ preferences may be shaped by the political parties and should not to be treated only as independent factors. The model should also be modified to take account of other sorts of processes such as social interaction, social conformity and what the authors have termed the ‘forked‐tail’ effect related to the generalization of the disillusionment from a specific party policy into a general disillusion with the party's competence.

Chapter 3 develops a cultural sociological model of the space of opinion and its role in democratic deliberation. It analyzes three waves of media theory which have shaped thinking about news and opinion. The first wave of media theory emphasized the importance of objective news and a neutral media for rational information-processing citizens. It defined much of the media scholarship produced prior to the 1960s, and it continues to resonate with broad publics because of its elective affinities with the professional project of objective journalism. The second wave of media theory had its roots at the University of Chicago in the 1920s. It offered a sociological analysis which recognized that small groups and social networks intervene between media and citizens to shape the nature of deliberation. The third wave of media theory builds on the second wave to emphasize that a wide variety of aesthetic and performative structures help citizens identify with media intellectuals, which leads to increased levels of public involvement in the political public sphere. This cultural model of media and deliberation points to the importance of a variety of communicative formats for journalism, including the innovative formats of the space of opinion.

This chapter examines the heuristic and theoretical importance of a distinction between rational and associative behaviour in animals in the case of imitation in the Japanese quail. It suggests that there is no Rubicon between associative and rational processes to be crossed and that evolution adds specific new cognitive capacities by tinkering with previous mechanisms. It proposes that research should refocus on specific explanations of how animals do specific things, rather than on the presence or absence of some general or ideal form of rationality that contrasts with associative mechanisms.

Sidgwick discusses the dilemma confronting the ethical theorist whose first principles, as first principles, do not require a proof, and yet are rarely accepted without a defence. The solution lies in Aristotle's distinction between logical (or natural) priority and priority in the mind of one person. While a proposition may be self‐evident, that is to say, cognizable without reference to other propositions, some rational process may be required to connect it to propositions already accepted in the mind of one individual.

This chapter examines the concept of animal reasoning and proto-logic. It provides an account of rational processes can be correlated or applied to animals and explains how non-linguistic animals might be rational in the sense of PP-rationality. It explains how analogues of familiar reasoning processes might be possible in the absence of linguistic structure and how it might be possible for non-linguistic animals to reason without exploiting the internal structure of thought or deploying logical concepts.

This chapter examines rational processes that involve the so-called ‘trials and errors in the head’. It explains that evolution conducts trial and error explorations over generations and instrumental conditioning improves on this by allowing an animal to learn within its own lifetime from trials and errors in its behaviour. It suggests that non-human animals can engage in trials and errors in the head at the level of perceptions of affordances and this is an example of practical rationality.

This chapter, and the ones that follow, argues that sympathy is a rational process, cultivated by education. The aim is to investigate the nature of social unity in Smith's work to see how Smith balances individual and social needs. The chapter looks at the sympathetic process in and of itself. It examines Smith's claim that increased cultural and physical proximity is a bulwark against natural sympathizing.

Sympathy is built upon the imagination, which is cultivated by education. This chapter looks at what Smith means by education, giving particular attention to the passive cultural elements that inform self-identity and awareness of others. The chapter first looks at the rational process by which a moral spectator enters into the persona of another, particularly those with whom he or she does not share cultural or political commonalities.

A second kind of formal rationality, complementary to the maximizing expected utility in Chapter 1, is logical inference. In much of moral philosophy and in standard bioethics decision making is applied ethics. Moral theories are taken to be comprised of principles that are applied to the facts of cases to deduce conclusions about what ought to be done. The canonical depiction of bioethics, for instance, consists of the four principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. The real examples in this chapter expose the many failings of that applied ethics. Most of the cases are about when to die and how to die, but the term ‘euthanasia’ is indeterminate. The crucial notion of ‘autonomy’ also is indeterminate. Both need to be clarified and specified. But how is this to be done? Similarly, when principles and rules conflict, as they often do, how is the one that prevails to be determined? There are no higher principles or rules that can be applied to get the right answer in any of these cases. More broadly, what makes a problem a moral problem, and what does being a moral problem mean? These issues require non-formal rational deliberation, not the formal rationality of deduction.

Dan Batson reflects on his most underappreciated work: a paper entitled “Rational processing or rationalization? The effect of disconfirming information on a stated religious belief.” Published in 1975 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study tested the dissonance theory by exploring the nature of religious beliefs and reactions to contrary evidence. Batson explains why his study had little impact in the field of social psychology.