For hundreds of years, philosophers explored how humans reason and what reasoning abilities humans possess. They were also interested at how these reasoning abilities could and should be applied to reach a peaceful and flourishing coexistence. The two sub-disciplines investigating these issues are theoretical and practical philosophy. Epistemology is the main research domain of the former, whereas morals and ethics represent the main research field of the latter. Philosophers like Kant often derived their theories on practical reasoning from their assumptions on theoretical reasoning, trying to propose an all-encompassing theory. Since the last century, even the field of natural sciences investigated on practical and theoretical human reasoning processes. In contrast to philosophy, disciplines like neuroscience or psychology used behavioral experiments instead of thought experiments , and the models proposed often refer either to practical or to theoretical reasoning. Actual proposals derived from experimental findings to explain human reasoning often suggest dual-process accounts. Dual-process models contain rational and emotional/intuitive cognitive processes that are assumed to be involved in human reasoning. Such assumptions have been made in the areas of theoretical and practical reasoning research. However, these reasoning domains have mainly been investigated in isolation and the respective dual-process accounts thus refer to either theoretical or practical reasoning. Therefore, the idea of the current thesis being presented here, is to investigate theoretical and practical reasoning combined, applying behavioral and brain imaging experiments to provide evidence that both reasoning domains are similarly based on rational and emotional/intuitive processes. If such evidence could be found, dual-process models should account for both of these reasoning domains. To reach this aim, three pre-studies and five experiments were conducted ranging from behavioral experiments with normal participants over extreme groups (i.e., persons with superior intelligence as compared to persons with average intelligence) to brain imaging techniques. The results reveal first hand evidences supporting the above assumptions. Theoretical and practical reasoning seem to require rational and emotional/intuitive cognitive processes based on activations in a fronto-temporo-parietal network in the brain. These results and further findings will be interpreted and discussed within the context of the current research on theoretical and practical reasoning.
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