Logic and Cognition Seminar

TBA

Alistair Isaac (Stanford University) "Modeling Abduction in Perception and Science", 29th October, 2009, Amsterdam.

Abstract: Peirce first identified abduction as a type of inference distinct from induction and deduction. He claimed that abduction permeates every aspect of human thought, from low-level perception to scientific theory choice. In contemporary philosophy, abduction is frequently considered only in the latter capacity, as a form of high-level scientific reasoning. In A.I., abduction is closely associated with the frame problem, the problem of how to determine relevance. Again, however, philosophers tend to identify this as a problem only for high-level reasoning. Fodor, for example, argues that low-level perceptual processes are encapsulated, and thus immune to the challenges of holistic reasoning, like abduction. In this talk I provide an overview of several different perspectives on abduction. I argue that the fundamental stumbling block for formal models of abduction is its inherently creative character. I conclude with a defence of Peirce's original insight, arguing that empirical research on perception is a field from which models of abduction in other domains (such as scientific reasoning) can and should draw inspiration.

Summer reading group "Bringing Logic to the Lab". We will discuss the following papers:

Flobbe, L., R. Verbrugge, P. Hendriks, and I. Krämer (2008). Children's Application of Theory of Mind in Reasoning and Language. In Journal of Logic, Language and Information 17: 417-442.
Pietarinen, A. (2003) What do epistemic logic and cognitive science have to do with each other? In Cognitive Systems Research 4(3): 169-190.
Weber (2001) Behaviour and Learning in the "Dirty Faces" Game, in Experimental Economics 4.
Szymanik & Zajenkowski (2009) Understanding Quantifiers in Language. In Proceedings of CogSci 2009.
Pelletier, Elio, Hanson (2008) Is Logic all in our heads? From naturalism to psychologism, in Studia Logica 88(1).
Van Lambalgen (2002) Logical Constructions suggested by Vision. Proceedings of ITALLC98, Lecture.
Tsotsos, J.K., Analyzing Vision at the Complexity Level, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13-3, p423 - 445, 1990.
Iris van Rooij, I. (2008). The Tractable Cognition thesis. Cognitive Science, 32, 939-984.

Please contact me for the time schedule if you would like to attend.

GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS: Formal Semantics Meets Computation and Cognition , 5-6 March 2009.
Iris van Rooij (Radbout University Nijmegen) "What Makes a Problem Hard (or Easy)? A Computational Perspective", 26th November, 2008, Amsterdam.
Nina Gierasimczuk & Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam) "Experimenting with some non-Fregean quantifier combinations", 19th May 2008, Amsterdam.
Johan van Benthem (Amsterdam & Stanford), ``Logic and Psychology: Do the Facts Matter?'', 11th February 2008, ILLC.
Robin Clark (University of Pennsylvania), ``The Neurobiology of Quantification'', 12 December 2007, ILLC Amsterdam.
Bart Geurts (University of Nijmegen) ``Scalar implicatures and local pragmatics'', 10 October 2007, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics.
Michiel van Lambalgen (University of Amsterdam) ``Is probability theory usefull in modelling human reasoning'', 20 June 2007, ILLC Amsterdam.
Marian Counihan (University of Amsterdam) ``Logical premises and everyday language'', 16 May 2007, ILLC Amsterdam.
Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam) ``A comment on a neuroimaging study of natural language quantifier comprehension'', 5 February 2007, CWI Amsterdam.

LOGIC AND COGNITION SEMINAR