Priors

People seem to expect that rules will be act-based rather than consequence-based. For instance, when people learn a new rule, given minimal evidence, they tend to think that the rule prohibits people from producing a certain consequence, rather than that the rule dictates that such a consequence should be minimized. One explanation is that people have an innate bias to think rules are act-based. This chapter suggests an alternative empiricist proposal. The expectation that rules will be act-based might be explained as a prior that is itself the result of earlier learning. In particular, given that most rules that people have learned are act-based rules, the prior for act-based rules might be acquired through a process of overhypothesis construction.