Logic and Cognition

Timetable

Topics:
- What is University (for)?
- Two system theories of reasoning: proponents and critics.
- Moral reasoning.
- Rationality.
- Standard methodological issues of empirical research on human reasoning
- Choice of the normative standard; Meaning coordination between experimenter and subject; Verbatim protocols
- Assessing the formal model 1 (logical models)
- Assessing the formal model 2 (probabilistic models)
- Course Summary

Module aim (aims)

The course is aimed at deepening participants’ insights into contemporary theory and practice of reasoning and
inference. On the theoretical side, we shall discuss the very notions of reasoning and inference from the point of view of cognitive science, considering the impact of the new influential psychologistic paradigm in logical research. On the practical side, we shall examine certain important developments in the analysis of reasoning and inference processes and their applications, concerning moral reasoning and decision making, the concept of rationality, as well as some methodological issues of empirical research on human reasoning.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Working knowledge of syntax, semantics and metalogical concepts of classical logic, basic propositional modal and three-valued logics.

Syllabus

Assessment
110 pts possible:
• Tutorials (80 pts):
– 4 tasks (30 pts max in total: 7, 8, 8, 7), at the end of each in-class tutorial, concerning topics just covered;
– term paper (50 pts); the topic of your choice, but approved.
• Final exam (30 pts): open-book.

Reading list

Readings
W. Ruegg, “Themes”, ch. 1 of Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), Cambridge UP, 2004.
K. Stenning and M. van Lambalgen (2008). Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science, The MIT Press
J. Haidt (2008). The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment (ch. 53 of J. E. Adler & L. Rips (eds.) Reasoning. Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations, Cambridge UP).
R. Sorensen (2004). Paradoxes of Rationality (ch. 14 of A. R. Mele & P. Rawling (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford UP).