Logic and cognition: an interpretative

Course Description

perspective on human reasoning and

communication

Keith Stenning

Human Communication Research Centre

Edinburgh University

k.stenning@ed.ac.uk

The course will explore the relation between logic and the empirical investigation of human reasoning and communication. It will propose that logic is an indispensible but much misunderstood conceptual framework for describing human information systems - as essential to the study of reasoning as geometry is to the study of visual perception.

Geometry is not an alternative to theories of perception, and simlarly, logic is not an аlternative to cognitive theories of human reasoning, but they ignore it at their peril.

A sequence of case studies from the psychology of reasoning - the syllogism, the 'suppression effect', the selection task - will be used to illustrate how psychological theory has failed by ignoring modern logic, and how richer empirical programs result from taking more logical care.

The view of human cognition which emerges is an interpretative one. Much of human thought is reasoning about which interpretation of which representation system to adopt for reasoning rather, than about reasoning from a fixed adopted interpretation. The course will end by illustrating how this view transforms the study of the evolution of human cognition.

References are to a book in preparation, joint with Michiel van Lambalgen, which is available at:

http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~keith/SophiaSummerSchool/coursetext.pdf.

Some other material including the up-to-date definitive version of this course outline will appear there. Since I am actively working on the material, students should best work from the material on the site. The book is a good source of other supplementary reading.

1. Logic and psychology in search of a working relationship The syllogism: subjects' models of communication.

Required Readings:

Chapters 1 and 2 of the course text.

Optional Readings:

Newstead, S. (1995) Gricean implicatures and syllogistic reasoning. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 644-664.

2. The 'suppression effect': an interpretative interpretation.

Required Readings:

Chapter 3.

Optional Readings:

R.M.J. Byrne. Suppressing valid inferences with conditionals. Cognition, 3f:61 83, 1989.

3. The selection task: how the experimenters got it wrong.

Required Readings:

Chapter 4.

Optional Readings:

Wason, P. (1968) Reasoning about a rule. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20, 273-81.

4. The evolution of human cognition from an interpretative perspective.

Required Readings:

Chapter 6.

Optional Readings:

Stenning Frijda Lecture at: http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~keith/SophiaSummerSchool/frijdawritten.pdf

5. The evolution of human cognition continues.

Required Readings:

As for previous lecture.

Small Groups:

The small groups will be used as an opportunity to discuss the lecture content and how the approach can generate empirical experimental programs when applied to other topics in human reasoning, communication and learning, drawn from students' own interests.

The course will assume as little background as possible. Some general knowledge of elementary logic, psychology of reasoning, discourse processing, and logic programming would all help, but none is essential.

Assessment:

Students requiring credit for the course should write a 10 page paper on the course's relevance to their own work, after discussing the topic with the lecturer.

Keith Stenning

Keith Stenning studied psychology arid philosophy at Oxford University and went on to write a PhD on discourse processing at Rockefeller University in New York. He lectured in psychology at Liverpool University and then moved to Edinburgh University in 1983 to the Centre for Cognitive Science. There he was the founding Director of the Human Communication Research Centre from 1989 1999, an ESRC Senior Research Fellow from 1999 2002. He is currently Chair of the Cognitive Science Society.