Patricia Churchland's Philosophy on Case-Based Reasoning

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Premise 2 focuses on Patricia Churchland’s philosophy on case based reasoning regarding making social decisions about what ought to be done. Decisions an individual may face can derive from a varying number of social scenarios. It can be about what the individual ought to do for themselves, what their loved ones ought to do, or even what their community and nation should do when faced with a choice. Patricia Churchland believes that the best way a rational being makes these decisions is through case based reasoning. Case based reasoning involves relying on memories and experiences to evaluate a setting and make a sensible decision as to what to do. By using case based reasoning, people can know when to best use traits such as kindness or …show more content…

I believe Churchland does not think of key factors such as how ones experiences may be the quite opposite of their peers due to numerous aspects. Given the number of people on the planet who live in communities with very different cultures and ways of living, people are bound to have very differentiating experiences from one another. This results in them also having different ways of reasoning and making decisions. An individual may have experiences that they are completely unfamiliar with, so it is a struggle to use case based reasoning to solve the issue because they cannot rely on prior knowledge. In a horrible scenario, if a mother is being forced to pick between which of her two children she can save, then it is a challenge to use case based reasoning to make this decision. If she has never experienced anything close to having to choose between her children, which many people have not, then she has no way of using her prior knowledge to make the decision. Even if she has had the experience before, it would not make picking between her other two children any easier or help her come to a decision. In these cases, one must rely on some other form of reasoning. An individual’s personal experiences that help them make decisions is an influence that may cause one to not be able to use case based reasoning depending on the scenario, or have a very different way of doing so from others in the

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