Logic and cognition

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)

Working knowledge of syntax, semantics and metalogic of classical logic. English at B2 level.

Syllabus

Week 1: Reasoning: perspectives, definitions, typologies; reasoning as social phenomenon
Week 2: Two system theories of reasoning: proponents and critics
Week 3: Moral reasoning
Week 4: Abduction
Week 5: Rationality
Week 6: Standard methodological issues of empirical research on human reasoning
Week 7: Choice of normative standard; Meaning coordination between experimenter and subject; Verbatim protocols
Week 8: Assessing the formal model 1 (logical models)
Week 9: Assessing the formal model 2 (probabilistic models)
Week 10: Individual appointments (term paper consultations)
Week 11: Individual appointments (term paper consultations)
Week 12: Individual appointments (term paper consultations)
Week 13: Individual appointments (term paper consultations)
Week 14: Individual appointments (term paper consultations)
Week 15: Individual appointments (term paper vivas)

Reading list

K. Stenning and M. van Lambalgen, Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science The MIT Press, 2008.
J. E. Adler and L. Rips (eds.) Reasoning. Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations., Cambridge UP, 2008.
L. Magnani and T. Bertolotti (eds.) Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science, Springer, 2017.
A. R. Mele and P. Rawling (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oxford UP, 2004