“Probability Logic and Human Reasoning”
Niki Pfeifer
Visiting Research Scholar, Center for Formal Epistemology (CMU)
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU)
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning
Abstract: The traditional psychology of deductive reasoning was characterized by the use of fragments of first-order logic as a rationality framework to study human inference. Recently, various probabilistic approaches have become popular in the psychology of deductive reasoning. In my talk I will advocate “coherence based probability logic” as a promising rationality framework for investigating reasoning under uncertain and incomplete knowledge. Specifically, I will critically discuss recent formal and empirical work on the interpretation of indicative conditionals, Aristotle’s thesis, and selected paradoxes of the material conditional. Moreover, I will present a formal measure of argument strength and show how it provides a new solution to an epistemic version of the Ellsberg paradox.