Interchange, Vol. 16, No.

1 (Spring, 1985), 14--26

Reasoning as Imagination

David N. Perkins
Harvard University We think of reasoning and imagining as very different acts of mind. The person inclined to and skilled at one may shun or handle clumsily the other. Sometimes the two are cast not just as strangers to one another but as enemies. Your imagination may foul your reasoning with fancy while your reasoning tethers your imagining with constraints. Our everyday language testifies to the popular perception of an uneasy relationship. It's commonplace to say something like, "Ralph is reasonable enough, but he lacks imagination." While such statements suggest that reasonableness and imaginativeness are independent abilities or proclivities, other remarks treat them as contraries: "Ralph's tOO reasonable; he needs more imagination" or "Ralph's too imaginative; he needs to be a little more rational about things." We can easily see why a clash of reasonableness and imagination makes surface sense; it matches our immediate associations with the two. "Imagination" connotes the counterfactual and the unruly, both in a vague sense unreasonable. Reasoning connotes a realistic and rule-bound activity, which seemingly must therefore be unimaginative. But maybe we're making a mistake here. Perhaps imagining has a good deal to do with sound reasoning, and reasoning a good deal to do with adventurous imagining. At points in The Mind's Best Work (Perkins, 1981), I've argued the latter thesis. Here I want to explore the former. For a first cut, one can easily argue that imagination is really a friend of the court of rationality. By imagining possible courses of action or possible interpretations of data we can help ourselves to come to well-reasoned decisions. However, to forecast some conclusions, a deeper cut reveals that the supposed rivalry of reasoning and imagining does not just dissolve into amity. Reasoning indeed depends crucially on imagining, but good reasoning requires the artful handling of imagination, which can as easily divert as support the course of reasoning if left to run its course willy-nilly. Especially interesting here are the specific hazards imagination presents and the defences reasoning erects against them. Before making this second cut, it's fair to ask, Why bother? First of all, there's an attempt t o get a better hold on the way things are, revising our perception of indifference or rivalry toward a more realistic appreciation of how reasoning and imagining relate. Second, there's a moral to be drawn about how easily, and misleadingly, our surface perceptions of concepts such as reasoning and imagining dominate and obscure relations that are much more complex. 14 Interchange 16/l9 Ontario Institute for Studies in Education 1985

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Finally, there is even practical import. Encouraging people to be more reasonable in educational and other contexts means encouraging them to be more imaginative in certain ways, a view not so often heard.

Coming to Terms
A good beginning requires a brief diversion concerning terminology. We can't recklessly construe how imagination might figure in reasoning without being clear about what the two mean. Sometimes people use reasoning to refer broadly to systematic thinking. In the present context, however, reasoning will mean the construction of arguments toward justifying or deriving and justifying conclusions. For instance, when we devise an argument to prove a theorem or derive a formula in mathematics, we are reasoning. When, in trying to decide for whom to vote or whether to buy this car or that, we consider reasons favoring one course or another, we are reasoning. In one of its senses, to imagine is simply to invent. When we worry that "Ralph lacks imagination," it is Ralph's powers of inventiveness that fall short, not his sensory imagery. But imagining can also mean forming a mental image with no trace of inventiveness, as when you imagine your mother's face or the look of your living room. Whether by such imagining one gains anything beyond the mere verbal positing of descriptive information has been controversial in psychology. However, Kosslyn (1980) offers substantial evidence that mental images do offer information and behave in certain other respects in the manner of pictures. Kolers and Smythe (1979), while not accepting Kosslyn's position, argue that, at the least, images function as a personal symbol system that sometimes operates in picture-like and sometimes in other ways, depending on the symbolic function. These views testify that the second sense of imagine deserves to be taken seriously and not dismissed as a name for an epiphenomenon. Moreover, the sense might even be extended to include the formation of a mental model of any sort, in view of the important role that mental models appear to play in human cognition (Gentner & Stevens, 1983; Johnson-Laird, 1983). Of course, the two senses of imagine can co-occur; when imagining castles in the air or a new theorem in geometry, you may form a sensory image and invent at the same time. For the present discussion, I will take the inventive sense of imagine as primary, while mentioning imagery or other sorts of model making from time to time. This definitional housekeeping done, let's move to
cases.

Imagination in Mathematical Reasoning

At least in the domain of mathematical reasoning, most would immediately acknowledge the importance of imagination. The evident challenge posed by many mathematical problems plainly calls upon the problem solver's powers of invention. To be sure, if a mathematical problem allows a solution by sheer guesswork or systematic computation, with no need to discover a path from givens to answer, then imagination need play no role. But virtually all serious

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mathematical problems do not surrender so easily, else they would not count as serious. Readily granting the importance of imagination to mathematics, we must also feel that mathematicians' imaginings pose no insurmountable threat to their logic. Yet, since imagining is an unruly force, how do they escape this threat and what defences do they deploy? A look at some elementary examples of mathematical imagination at work will suggest an answer. The standard derivation of the formula for the area of a triangle, one half the base times the height, involves two inventive transformations of the problem. Beginning with an arbitrary triangle, you attach a duplicate of it to itself along one edge, making a parallelogram as in Figure 1. The parallelogram, of course, has twice the area of the original triangle. Then you work with the parallelogram, slicing a triangle off one end and moving it to the other to form a rectangle with the same base, height, and, of course, areaas the parallelogram. You know the formula for the area of a rectangle--base times the height--so you have reduced the original triangle problem to a known one.

/
/
Figure 1. The area of a triangle transformed into 1/2 the area of a rectangle.

For another example, a classic elementary problem of mathematics asks you to find the sum of the numbers from 1 to 50, that is, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 . . . + 50 = ?. Adding up all the numbers serves the purpose, but does a better way exist? Not only does it, but presumably the young Gauss amazed his teacher by divining such a method. Folding the series in half at its midpoint between 25 and 26 yields the following: 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 2 3 + 50+ 49+ 48+ ...+28+ ?=51+ 51+51+...+51+ 2 4 + 25 (fold here) 2 7 + 26 51+51

As the illustration shows, when you fold the series, the numbers that fall together always sum to 51, making the solution transparent--51 2 5 = 1275.

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The same folding tactic, generalized, can justify the formula for the sum of 1 to n, which is simply n(n + 1)/2. Both cases make plain how imagination, unruly though it is, can leave mathematical reasoning unmarred. To be sure, imagining often breaks patterns, but the patterns broken need not be rules of deduction. In the triangle argument, for example, the pattern of one figure, the given triangle, is broken by introducing a mirror-image replica. In the sum problem, the pattern of one continuous sequence of terms from left to right is broken by folding the sequence. But neither move involves an improper deduction. On the contrary, by transforming the representation of the problem, both moves disclose opportunities for deduction not formerly apparent. Both moves, involving rearrangements of spatial layout, also demonstrate how imagining in the sense of manipulating images can figure in mathematical reasoning. It's not so, of course, that imagery in its most straightforward sense always applies. In algebraic branches of mathematics, many, perhaps most, theorems are proved purely by the manipulation of notational expressions, which involves imagining in the sense of inventing but not obviously in the sense of forming diagrams. Arnheim (1969) has argued that even in cases where imagery does not play an obvious role in the overt expression of thought, it operates covertly as a principal vehicle of inquiry and understanding. This may be so even in such an austere domain as pure algebra. In any case, if by some odd magic we had never had powers of imagery, clearly our mathematics would be dramatically impoverished.

Hazards of the Mathematical Imagination

All this might suggest that imagination never does any mischief in mathematics. But it can. Let us look at an example that conveniently illustrates several hazards at once. A problem appeared on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for 1980 that provoked considerable media attention because the official answer turned out to be wrong (Davis, 1984, chap. 15). The problem ran something as follows. Take a pyramid with a square base and triangular sides, all edges of the same length. Now take another pyramid with all sides triangular and all edges of the same length as before. The triangular sides of both pyramids are, of course, exactly the same size, being bounded by three edges of the same length. Make a composite form by gluing the two pyramids together along a matching face, as illustrated in Figure 2. The question? How many sides does the resulting form have? SAT's answer was seven: the square-based pyramid has five sides and the wholly triangular pyramid four, so gluing them together puts one side from each on the inside, leaving four and three on the outside for a total of seven. Unfortunately, this reasoning overlooks a possibility. What if, when you glue the pyramids together, two faces that meet at an edge also happen to be parallel7 Then together they would form just one face rather than two. In fact, exactly this happens.

The hazard of a persuasive image. Why were most test-takers as well as the SAT experts deceived? Because of the persuasiveness of an image. Suppose

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we imagine or sketch the proposed construction, as in Figure 2. Then, at least to most people, the sides of the second pyramid do not look parallel to any of the first. We are misled by an illusion. As argued earlier, strict deduction is our protection against unruly imagination in mathematics. But the protection only works so long as we don't confuse hypothesis with proof. Suppose you consider the possibility that two adjacent faces might fall in the same plane and so count as one. You probably reject this possibility because they don't look like they fall in the same plane. Well, this is a good hypothesis, but it is not a proof. If you sharply discriminate logic from the appearance of a construction, you ask, " H o w can I prove that the faces aren't parallel, granted that they don't look parallel?" You do not fall into the trap of the persuasive image.

Figure 2. A pyramid with a triangular base glued to a face of a pyramid with a square base.

The hazard that patterns once made are hard to break. Imagination is not anarchy. When you imagine, you typically make a new pattern. This new pattern may break a previous pattern or may be formed ex nihilo. But the catch is this: if the new pattern turns out not to be helpful, it too must be cast away. Yet you've invested yourself in constructing it, you have high hopes for the insight it will yield, and consequently you may find yourself trapped by it. You may never even think to try to break it. The fact that thinking depends on the recalling or composing of patterns which may, in turn, need to be broken is one of the deep paradoxes of mental functioning (Cf. Perkins, 1981, chap. 6). Again, the pyramid problem provides an apt example. Suppose you have avoided hazards one and two, sketching Figure 2 but recognizing that the figure might mislead and so seeking a proof. How do you proceed then? It's most natural to work from the construction you have and try, through geometry or algebra, to resolve the question of the adjacent sides. Unfortunately, this is likely to lead into a tangle of equations.

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But if you think to abandon the construction you have and seek a different problem representation, you might find a more direct demonstration. In fact, there is a construction that shows clearly the parallel sides (Young, 1982). Imagine a row of pyramids with square bases, as in Figure 3. Now think of the space between two of the pyramids, highlighted by dotted lines in the figure. Note that this in-between form has the requisite four sides with six equal edges. It is the second pyramid, with one face flush against the first pyramid just as in Figure 2! Yet, when you consider the whole row of square-based pyramids and their nested triangular pyramids, clearly the two mesh together to make one continuous 'bar'. So we see that two faces of the triangular pyramid in fact fall parallel to two of the square pyramid, forming single faces. That yields five faces in all rather then seven.

Figure 3. A row of pyramids with square bases, the spaces between them forming triangular-based pyramids.

This image, of course, no more proves that the faces lie parallel than the original image proved that they did not. But it is an entry to a proof. Working from the new image, one can handily construct the needed argument.

The hazard of gestalt hunger. The case of the pyramids holds yet one more moral. In the previous paragraphs, I suggested resolving the problem by means of a new representation that made the answer transparent. We all enjoy such resolutions because they seem particularly clear and telling. But suppose a proof using algebra with the initial representation came fairly easily. This algebraic proof would do the job, but we'd find it somewhat bloodless and less satisfying. The fact is that the visual gestalt convinces us better than shuffling equations. The gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer (1945) developed such a contrast at length, questioning the merits of proofs by chains of obscure symbolic transformations while preferring those that make the essence of the problem

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clear somehow, perhaps by motivating any necessary notationalizing with a powerful representation or re-representation of the problem. The sum of integers problem outlined earlier provides a telling illustration of Wertheimer's contrast. How do you prove that the sum 1 + 2 + 3 + . . . + n equals n(n + 1)/2? One way involves the gestalt solution of folding the series in half, which quickly leads to the formula. But the same conclusion can be proved by a technique called mathematical induction. There's no need to explore the technique in detail here, but basically one has only to show that (a) the formula in question holds for the case n = 1, and (b) if it holds for any case n, then it holds for the case n + 1. These two steps establish the result for all n. Mathematical induction is a powerful tactic that yields proofs for a wide range of claims about the positive integers. So, what is the dilemma? In brief, we hunger for the neat compelling gestalt solution--and rightly so, because it does reveal more. We feel, perhaps, somewhat distrustful of the extended algebraic manipulation that yields the same conclusion. But often such solutions are our only recourse. We cannot casually neglect clever notational inference, since a good gestalt solution may prove hard to come by. In this sense, we cannot always afford the luxury of feeding our gestalt hunger. In summary, a close look discloses that mathematical reasoning nearly always calls for imagining in the sense of inventiveness and often calls for imagining in the sense of inventing an imagistic representation that transforms one's understanding of the problem. By and large, such imagining does not threaten the soundness of mathematical reasoning because it breaks patterns other than those concerned with strict deductive inference. But imagination does not play a wholly benign role since it poses hazards of the persuasive image, hard to break patterns, and gestalt hunger. These hazards make the contribution of imagination to mathematical reasoning a matter of handling imagination critically, not just wielding it casually.

Informal Contrasted with Formal Reasoning

The same array of questions deserves exploration in another domain of reasoning, one I'll call informal or everyday reasoning. Informal reasoning refers to justification of claims in any context other than mathematical, formal logical, or syllogistic. Most of the reasoning we do is informal. Occasions of informal reasoning include, for instance, deciding for whom to vote, writing an essay in which you advance and defend a thesis, arguing over the merits of a referendum, figuring out whether to buy this car or that, and determining whether to take a job that has been offered. One might assume at first that imagination plays exactly the same role in informal reasoning as in formal, supposing that the two differ only superficially. Some hold that informal reasoning is really just formal reasoning in casual dress, where probabilistic steps and various features of natural language conceal the formal inferential structure. But there are good grounds for the contrary view that informal reasoning differs fundamentally from formal reasoning. The contrast between the troubles people encounter in mathematical and

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in informal reasoning reflect some fundamental differences between the logical demands of the two. Mathematical argument, and formal argument in general, proceeds by strict deduction from givens. In contrast, informal argument proceeds by probable inference from givens plus whatever world knowledge the reasoner can bring to bear. This fundamental contrast in manner of inference has repercussions such as the following: Informal arguments can incorporate data from all sorts of unexpected sources forbidden to formal argument, which must work only with the givens. Good informal arguments almost always have to address both sides of a case; a good formal argument never does, assuming consistent axioms, because formal arguments on both sides would amount to an outright inconsistency. Good informal arguments usually need to be hedged; the strict deduction of formal argument makes this unnecessary. Lines of informal argument have to be short because, since each step is only probable, a long chain of inferences becomes very unreliable; proceeding by strict deduction, a formal line of argument can have many steps without sacrificing reliability. An informal argument typically needs many lines of reasoning since no single line has perfect reliability; a formal argument needs only one, which settles the matter. As these points make plain, a good informal argument has a structure radically different from that o f a good formal argument. The question remains whether and how, in consequence, imagination figures differently in the two.

Imagination in Informal Reasoning

For the past few years, my colleagues and I have been investigating informal reasoning, its pitfalls, and the impact o f high school, college, and graduate school education on informal reasoning skills (Perkins, 1982; Perkins, Allen, & H a f n e r , 1983). Some of the conclusions we have reached help to define the role o f imagination in informal reasoning. To anticipate a principal conclusion: faulty informal reasoning reflects a lack of imagination more than it does the commission of either formal fallacies such as affirming the consequent or informal fallacies such as ad hominem argument. The evidence for this comes from a large collection o f arguments gathered from individuals of various ages and levels of education. We posed to the participants issues that had some timeliness during the period of data collection and then elicited their positions and supporting arguments. Our methodology encouraged the participants to explore both sides of the case and to give as thorough an accounting as they could o f the reasoning behind their positions. By way o f illustration, one question we used went as follows: " W o u l d restoring the military draft significantly increase America's ability to influence world e v e n t s ? " Here are some arguments typical of those we encountered (these are prototypical renderings, not actual quotes): Yes, because a draft would give the U.S. more manpower in the army. The U.S. would have a bigger stick to wave and foreign nations would be impressed.

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Yes, because more manpower would put the U.S. in a better position to fight limited tactical wars. Since everyone is scared of world-wide nuclear war, small-scale wars are more likely and a military well-manned and ready to intervene should provide more influence. No, because a draft would trigger widespread protests, as it did during the Vietnam war. This internal dissension would be seen as a lack of unity and a sign of weakness by foreign observers. No, because nowadays it's computers, missiles, and the people who design and maintain them that really count. If the U.S. needs anything in the army, it's more smart technical people. But a random draft won't net very many such people, As must be plain, the principal trouble with such arguments is incompleteness. Each puts forward a point worth pondering. A really good reasoner would make all these points and m a n y more besides, pulling out of the whole some balanced appraisal of the pros and cons. In advancing the various lines of argument, the good reasoner also would note counterarguments that qualify them and would make appropriate hedges. Instead, the typical argument in our sample concentrates on one side of the case, does not develop that side very fully, and neglects relevant counterarguments and appropriate hedges. In informal reasoning, people rarely have difficulty finding at least one line of argument pro or con. Most people mention more, and our research shows that, if pressed, people usually can think up several m o r e besides that. Sins of omission constitute the greatest weakness of informal reasoning. An argument typically fails not because a person cannot think of an argument or because the argument a person generates has no logical bearing but rather because a number of other lines of argument, some of them independent of the given argument and some qualifying it, need consideration too. These differences in t h e shape taken by sound informal versus formal argument mean that the two pose quite different problems o f imagination for the reasoner. Whereas in mathematics you need to invent one often evasive line of argument, in informal reasoning you need to invent many individually often rather accessible lines of argument. The rich tapestry of causal influences that characterizes real-life situations means that this imaginative process can go quite far. By w a y of example, let's take one line of argument from the military draft issue and explore it m o r e fully. Maybe sheer manpower isn't so important nowadays. It's technical people that get the work done and a draft wouldn't snag such people. But can I imagine a draft that would snag technical people? Well, a selective draft, one targetted on certain kinds of individuals, could. Can I imagine any reservations about such a draft? Traditionally, U.S. drafts have been by lottery. There's something undemocratic about a selective draft, which would lead to resistance. On the other hand, I think I remember that during the Vietnam war physicians had some sort of special status and were almost sure to be drafted. So maybe a selective draft would be possible. Suppose so. What else can I imagine might go wrong with strengthening the armed services with technical people through a selective draft? Well, perhaps the armed services don't really need technical people. After all, the services routinely hire civilian personnel to do many of those technical jobs, without any draft required.

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Also, what will actually strengthen our armed services is one question and what will impress foreign observers another. Perhaps a larger army overall would impress them more than a larger technical staff. And so on. As this example makes plain, many everyday issues pursued vigorously lead to seemingly endless ramifications. At each branch point, our imaginations have the job of exploring whether the argument can be carded further. It's worth adding that imagination figures in this exploratory process in its second sense as well, the sense of forming images. Our everyday reasoning often involves executing a mental play that enacts in sketchy form the causal relationships out of which we build much of our everyday reasoning. In examining mathematical reasoning, we asked what protected such reasoning from the pattern-breaking character of imagination. The same question needs to be asked here as well. In mathematics, our guardian against the ravages of imagination was strict deduction, the rules of which were not generally imagined otherwise, whatever else our imagination was up to. But, of course, informal argument, laden as it is with probabilistic inference, does not depend on strict deduction. Here our guardians are dialectical reasoning and good judgment. Dialectical reasoning simply means that we check our lines of argument by continuing to argue. If we imagine one line of argument, we then imagine how that line of argument might go wrong, as illustrated above by the exploration of the draft issue. If we develop one side of the case, then we imagine points on the other side of the case. Through such a dialectical process, our imagination polices itself against its own failings. Good judgment figures when we weigh the contributions of various fines of argument to the overall conclusion, or perhaps to an intermediate conclusion. For instance, we can easily imagine that a draft will trigger protest. But how much protest? And, given that much, how disunified would the U.S. really look to foreign observers? And, given that the armed services would be expanded, the protests notwithstanding, to what extent would the "bigger stick" more than make up for, or less than make up for, the protest effect? To be sure, each of these questions might in itself lead to an articulated argument. But even if so, the regress cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually, whether for lack of further arguments or lack of will, one comes to the point where one simply makes judgments, appraising the likely strengths of causal influences and other factors. Good judgment here is really a matter of connoisseurship about the way the world works, a matter, that is, of having a feel for which currents flow more strongly. Whereas the imagination generates possible scenarios, it is this connoisseurship that appraises their relevance. Evidently, neither dialectical reasoning nor good judgment provides the sturdy defence against imagination gone wild that strict deduction does. Whereas what constitutes sound deduction is a fairly sharply defined matter of conformity with a very restricted set of rules, successful dialectical reasoning and sound judgment are matters of discovery and sensitive appraisal depending on a host of contextual factors. One would like something better, of course, but the messiness of informal reasoning is a fact of life. Indeed, the messiness of life is a fact of life, and that in turn makes informal reasoning messy. Although dialectical reasoning and good judgment may not offer the

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bulwark against wild imagination that strict deduction does, those are the defences we have.

Hazards of the Imagination in Informal Reasoning Several hazards of the imagination were reviewed in the case of mathematical reasoning. Not so well defended, informal reasoning is subject to an even greater extent to such hazards. Moreover, the categories of hazards examined earlier prove relevant in informal reasoning as well.
The hazard o f a persuasive imaage. Just as in mathematics, a given representation of a Situation can carry a persuasive power that may mislead. The practice of everyday argument often brings into play highly charged construals of a situation that bear such power. Consider, for example, the issue of abortion. Someone may tell us that abortion is murder. Or someone may say that abortion is a matter o f a woman's rights over her own body. Whichever argument we hear, it evokes a general schema of murder or personal liberty that exerts a strong claim on our allegiance. So dramatic are those schemas that they tend to pre-empt further inquiry. When you think about it, naive reasoners almost never reach conclusions contrary to their own surface intuitions. In another paper (1982), I've characterized unskilled reasoners as having a "makes sense epistemology," meaning that what seems to make sense has almost complete priority in their beliefs. But the whole point of good reasoning is that you should be able sometimes to reach a conclusion contrary to your own surface intuitions. What is our defence against misleading surfaces? In mathematics, the commitment to strict deduction resolves the matter: the look of an image simply does not count as evidence although it suggests an hypothesis. You must have a formal proof. In informal reasoning, matters are not so simple. The good fit of an image with a situation does provide some legitimate evidence. But certainly it does not wholly justify a conclusion; the dialectic must continue awhile. In the case of abortion, for instance, I am not arguing that either the murder or the personal freedom schema is wrong. Perhaps the core of the matter is that abortion is murder or a matter of individual rights or both. But, clearly, whether either of these construals applies to abortion should itself be a matter of inquiry---and generally is in any serious exploration of the issue. The hazard that patterns once made are hard to break. This hazard, evident enough in formal reasoning, pervades informal reasoning. It's already been emphasized that informal reasoning calls for multiple lines of argument on both sides of the case. Every time the reasoner seeks another line of argument, especially one countering the argument up to that point, the reasoner must break the pattern so far. If, in exploring the abortion issue, we have only discovered the murder schema, we may ponder critically whether or not it applies while neglecting to consider what other schemas might fit--the personal liberty schema, for instance. Notice that here, breaking a schema does not necessarily mean discarding it, but at Mast escaping its thrall to consider others as well.

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Consider again the expanded argument on part of the draft issue. It started with the notion that the armed forces need technical people whom a draft wouldn't catch. This sounded sensible enough, but three elements of it were challenged in turn: whether a draft might indeed select technical people, whether the services actually needed technical people, and whether a genuinely stronger armed services was what would look stronger to outsiders. To generalize, the dialectical character of good informal reasoning requires pattern breaking over and over again.
Gestalt hunger. In mathematics, we prefer the elegant transparent proof---the sort Wertheimer celebrated--but at least we nearly always get a clear resolution one way or the other. In informal reasoning, we often encounter a tangle of arguments on both sides of the case. We would like the murder schema or the personal liberty schema to be right, but not both half-right in some uneasy meld and compromise. Sometimes we do find a clean resolution. Suppose, for example, you have a list of seemingly equally balanced pros and cons. Occasionally, you may be able to filter your list in a principled way. Perhaps you can say, "This is basically a moral issue" or "This is basically a financial issue," cast out a number of the reasons, and find a clean resolution. Sometimes you may be able to decide the matter on the basis of the exact nature of the claim. If the claim at issue is a scientific theory and you have some evidence for and some against, the " c o n " argument should win unless it's very tenuous because the theory makes a universal claim that always should hold up. In these and other ways you may be able to distill a definite decision from seemingly very mixed evidence. But not always. In many circumstances, you find nothing but a mix and a muddle, ff you have to make a decision, you can only weigh the pros and cons as best you are able and follow their vote. There is something terribly unsatisfying about this. We have that gestalt hunger clamoring to be fed. The hazard, of course, is not that we feel bad about some of our conclusions. We can bear that. The hazard, rather, is that our gestalt hunger pushes us into bad reasoning. This can happen in at least two ways. On the one hand, a mixed case with a leaning one way or another may not convince us as much as it should, because we want a good gestalt; we want the reasons on the weaker side of the case to go away somehow. On the other, our gestalt hunger acts as a subtle motive against dialectical reasoning, because dialectical reasoning often leads to realistically messy decision making.

On Being Unimaginatively Reasonable

This inquiry began with the conventional rivalry between reasoning and the imagination, a rivalry reflected in such phrases as "Ralph is reasonable enough, but he lacks imagination." Now we see that such an appraisal of Ralph, sensible sounding though it seems, is misconceived. Ralph cannot be "reasonable enough" if he lacks imagination. Good reasoning depends crucially on the vigorous exercise of imagination. It wasn't terribly surprising to find imagination so important in mathemat-

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ical reasoning. A shade more surprising is the notion that imagination routinely, not just occasionally, figures centrally in sound reasoning in daily contexts. More interesting yet are the charts we've been able to draw of the hazards of the imagination and how to navigate among them. As those charts show, the traditional rivalry has something to it. Imagination does indeed threaten the probity of reasoning in various ways, through the hazards of the persuasive image, finding patterns once made hard to break, gestalt hunger, and perhaps others as well. Fortunately, defences against those hazards turn out to be part and parcel of the practice of reasoning. In mathematical reasoning, strict deduction provides a bulwark, while in informal reasoning, dialectical argument and good judgment mount a defence, although perhaps not as well. So Ralph cannot be unimaginatively reasonable. But why does it seem that he can? Why do such statements sound sensible, even though they are not? Perhaps the explanation comes down to this. We don't see informal reasoning as being particularly hard in comparison with, say, mathematical reasoning, where we routinely acknowledge the need for ingenuity and the service of imagination. Of course, the special status of mathematics is an illusion. Good informal reasoning is quite as hard, calling for vigorous dialectic and refined judgment. It doesn't appear so hard because we settle for a persuasive image of the situation which, once made by our habits of thinking, proves hard to break. We need to stretch our imaginations even to discern the radical exercise of imagination that everyday reasoning demands.
References

Anaheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davis, R. B. (1984). Learning mathematics: The cognitive science approach to mathematics education. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gentner, D., & Stevens, A. (Eds.). (1983). Mental models. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kolers, P., & Smythe, W. (1979). Images, symbols, and skills. Canadian Journal of
Psychology, 33, 158-184.

Kosslyn, S. (1980). Image and mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perkins, D. (1981). The mind's best work, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perkins, D. (1982). Difficulties in everyday reasoning and their change with education: Final report to the Spencer Foundation. Unpublished manusc'ript, Project Zero, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Perkins, D., Allen, R., & Hafner, J. (1983). Difficulties in everyday reasoning. In W. Maxwell (Ed.), Thinking: The expanding frontier (pp. 177-189). Philadelphia: The Franklin Institute Press. Wertheimer, M. (1945). Productive thinking. New York: Harper. Young, S. (1982). The mental representation of geometrical knowledge. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 3(2), 123-144.