Gang Fang's Blog

What is the precise definition of system 1 and system 2? I was discussing with Genia the other day and realized I was describing their characteristics and giving examples, which most of other people do. But I wasn’t really talking about the definition Kahneman provided in his research.

Okay, so in the book Thinking Fast and Slow, this is how the dual system theory is described:

Psychologists have been intensely interested for several decades in the two ways of thinking evoked by the picture of the angry woman and by the multiplication problem, and have offered many labels for them. I adopt terms originally proposed by the psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West, and will refer to two systems in the mind, System 1 and System 2.

• System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
• System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

[…]

In rough order of complexity, here are some examples of the automatic
activities that are attributed to System 1:

• Detect that one object is more distant than another.
• […]

The highly diverse operations of System 2 have one feature in common: they require attention and are disrupted when attention is drawn away. Here are some examples:

• Brace for the starter gun in a race.
• […]

What the author did is the same: describing characteristics and giving examples. I realized when these concepts are studied, they are being looked at and reasoned about from the outside, and all we can do is characterize them. In other word, define them behaviorally, which is still a definition. When I asked the definition question, I didn’t really know what kind of definition I was looking for.

This is a further description of the two systems:

The S1/S2 model was offered as a general version of these specific theories, highlighting features of the two modes of thought that tended to appear in all the theories.

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/dual-process-theory-system-1-and-system-2

Criticisms from Keith Stanovich, who coined the terms originally

Firstly, s1/s2 represent two distinct systems, which isn’t the case.

The terms “System 1 and System 2” suggest just that: two distinct, clearly defined systems with their own distinctive properties and modes of operation. However, there’s no single “System 1”: rather, a wide variety of different processes and systems are lumped together under this term. It is also unclear whether there is any single System 2, either. As a result, a number of researchers including Stanovich himself have switched to talking about “Type 1” and “Type 2” processing instead

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HbXXd2givHBBLxr3d/system-2-as-working-memory-augmented-system-1-reasoning

Secondly, typical features of the two systems don’t really define them, as how I was questioning myself.

A variety of attributes have been commonly attributed to either Type 1 or Type 2 processing. However, one criticism is that there is no empirical or theoretical support for such attributes to only occur with one type of processing.

[…]

They note that this correlation has never been empirically examined, and that there are also various processes in which attributes from both sets co-occur. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HbXXd2givHBBLxr3d/system-2-as-working-memory-augmented-system-1-reasoning

So, how do Evans and Stanovich define T1 vs. T2?

Evans & Stanovich propose to combine their models and define Type 2 processes as those which use working memory resources (closely connected with fluid intelligence) in order to carry out hypothetical reasoning and cognitive decoupling. In contrast, Type 1 reasoning is anything which does not do that.

Cognitive decoupling can be defined as the ability to create copies of our mental representations of things, so that the copies can be used in simulations without affecting the original representations.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HbXXd2givHBBLxr3d/system-2-as-working-memory-augmented-system-1-reasoning

Consciousness and the dual process theory

T2 processing isn’t defined by consciousness. Take the example of the consciousness of a cat: it is conscious about, let say, eating, but it is not capable of carrying out reasoning or hypothetical thinking.

Note that consciousness, T2 and features that make human distinct are more independent than what they appear to be. Take the act of speaking: language is largely a human feature, which most animals don’t possess. But the speech production process happens unconsciously when one intends to say something, even when one may be conscious of the intention.

The ad hoc committee must be put together by some rapid and preconscious process—any feeling that “we” are willing and choosing the course of our thoughts and actions is an illusion

Are there unconscious Type 2 processing?

I don’t think so. There could be conscious experiences that aren’t Type 2, but all type 2 tasks are carried out consciously.