24 marzo 2023: Gustavo Cevolani: Rationality, fallacies, and truth approximation
Gustavo Cevolani - IMT School for Advanced Studies
Rationality, fallacies, and truth approximation
24 marzo 2023: Piattaforma Zoom, ore 16:00-18:00 (Milan time).
In order to obtain the link for the webinar, please write to: logic.unimi@gmail.com
Abstract:
Philosophers, epistemologists, and, more recently, psychologists, have long discussed the role played by so-called cognitive utilities (truth, probability, information, confirmation, and the like) in human reasoning and cognition. In this talk, I focus on one such utility (initially discussed by Popper), known as truthlikeness or verisimilitude: informally, the property of beliefs that are “close to the truth”, i.e., that embed much truthful information about a target domain. I first provide a formal definition of truthlikeness applicable to simple but relevant cases. Then, I show how truthlikeness can help making sense of the puzzling reasoning behavior of experimental participants in well-known psychological tasks; in particular, I discuss the “conjunction fallacy” (also known as the “Linda paradox”) in reasoning under uncertainty. Finally (time permitting) I present the results of the first experimental investigation of the notion of truthlikeness, aiming at assessing the cognitive reality of this notion as a determinant of human reasoning and cognition. I conclude by outlining possible future directions of our project and their implications for current research on rationality and cognition.
La conferenza si terrà in inglese.
La partecipazione alla conferenza è fortemente consigliata agli allievi della Scuola di Dottorato in Filosofia e Scienze dell’Uomo e della Scuola di Dottorato di Mente, Cervello e Ragionamento.
La partecipazione è aperta a tutti gli interessati.