Daniel Kahneman and the Fallible Mind

November 15, 2026

Together with Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman discovered many fascinating quirks of the human mind, such as “framing effects,” the “anchoring bias,” and the “availability heuristic.” In doing so, he helped to revolutionize our understanding of the mind: there is a new, non-Freudian unconscious in town, one that actually steers us right much of the time. But what does Kahneman’s way of thinking suggest about who we are as human beings? Which of our cognitive quirks are benign, which benevolent, and which malignant? And what, if anything, can we do about the bad ones? Josh and Blakey check their biases with Tamar Gendler from Yale University, author of Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology.

Part of the Jewish Thinkers series.

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Portrait of psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman
Tamar Gendler, Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Yale University

Related Resources

Gendler, Tamar Szabo (2013). Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology.

Gendler, Tamar Szabo (2016). Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases.

Kahneman, Daniel (2013). Thinking Fast and Slow.

Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky (2000), eds. Choices, Values and Frames. 

Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky (1982), eds. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

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