Ecological rationality and the philosophy of orientation

Ecological rationality claims human rationality emerges from the application of ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics. Although the adaptive toolbox contains many such tools, a heuristic selection mechanism interacts with situational cues to choose one that is contextually appropriate. The result is adaptive behavior and cognition. Ecological rationality evaluates the rationality of psychological mechanisms in terms of correspondence i.e., in terms of the ‘fit’ or ‘conformity’ between properties of the mechanism and features of the world. We argue, however, that ecological rationality presupposes more fundamental orientation processes not fully thematized but that are essential to being rational. We use Stegmaier’s (2008/2019) philosophy of orientation to bring out these processes. We maintain that the concepts of the standpoint, horizon, and footholds, and the existential structuring of our orientations into routines and orientation worlds can be fruitfully integrated into the ecological rationality framework. Orientation processes impose bottom-up and top-down constraints that help to make the heuristic selection process more tractable, complementing the strictly bottom-up approach taken by ecological rationality. These orientation processes also show that rationality is not only about conformity with states of the world but also about maintaining a coherent standpoint across situations. We end by proposing future research on how the philosophy of orientation can account for different orientations humans can take, specifically our ability to switch from individual to collective standpoints. This alters the types of situations we can survey and the cues we can uncover and respond to, thus expanding the horizon of intelligibility.