Advanced seminar: Reasoning

Timetable

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 analysis of reasoning and inference processes and their applications, concerning moral reasoning and decision making, abductive reasoning, 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)

English at B2 level; working knowledge of fundamental concepts and methods of Classical Propositional Calculus.

Syllabus

1. Reasoning: perspectives, definitions, typologies; reasoning as social phenomenon. 2. Two system theories of reasoning: proponents and critics. 3. Moral reasoning. 4. Abduction. 5. Rationality.

Reading list

Basic references: J. E. Adler and L. Rips (eds.) (2008). Reasoning. Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations, Cambridge UP. A. R. Mele & P. Rawling (eds.) (2004). The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford UP. K. Stenning and M. van Lambalgen (2008). Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science, The MIT Press.