Reference
Daniel Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow is where most readers meet System 1 and System 2, and he described them there as fictitious characters.
Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) used System 1 and System 2 as its organising device, and that book is the likeliest place any general reader has met them. He was careful about their status in a way his summarisers often are not: he called them fictitious characters and defended them on the grounds that an agent is easier to think about than a list of properties.
So the labels should not be read as his claim about the anatomy of the mind. Whether a two-part division is the right account of thinking at all remains in dispute among psychologists, and citing him does not settle it.
Referenced work
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) reference
Elsewhere
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