A series of talks entitled "Normative and Descriptive Models of Reasoning"

On April 26 and May 17, two consecutive meetings of the theoretical workshop "Formal Philosophy" on the topic "Normative and descriptive models of reasoning" took place.

At the first meeting of the workshop "Formal Philosophy" A.N. Poddyakov, A.S. Bobrova and V.V. Dolgorukov made presentations on the topic "Normative and Descriptive Models of Reasoning: The Opinion of Solvers on the Causes of Erroneous and Correct Answers in Problems of Non-Transitivity of Superiority; Alternatives to Kripke Semantics and a Variety of Conditionals."

Abstract

It is planned to discuss the interim results of the study of normative and descriptive models of reasoning conducted in the laboratory. The focus will be on the results presented by A.N. Poddyakov who managed to develop a methodology and conduct a unique experiment. Participants (n= 135) were given a task on reflection - about the causes of erroneous and correct solutions to these problems by other people in addition to solving logical follow–up tasks in relation to situations of non-transitivity of superiority (A exceeds B, B exceeds C, C exceeds A). The situation of non-transitivity of superiority presented in the problem with three teams of wrestlers defeating each other on the principle of "rock, scissors, paper" was considered possible by the overwhelming majority of participants. And the vast majority considered impossible the situation presented in another problem, namely sets of pencils that vary in length, although it is also possible. The most common participants’ answers were devoted to the causes of other people's mistakes in solving these problems: the problem of wrestlers is a task about living, dynamic, interactive, and here a variety of variants of outcomes are possible, unlike the pencils problem– inanimate, static, non-cooperative where paradoxical outcomes that look to many people contrary to some rules of mathematics and logic, they seem impossible. At the end of the session, an overview of the difficulties caused by the use of standard C semantics will be given. In order to analyse a number of epistemic scenarios, Kripke proposed a version of alternative construction of epistemic logic seeking to overcome these difficulties. Finally, the workshop participants will consider a simple demonstration task.

 

 

 

At the second session, A.S. Bobrova and I.A. Nikitina made presentations on the topic "Normative and Descriptive Models of Reasoning-2: The Variety of Conditionals and The Things Logics of Framing Model".

Abstract

It is planned to continue discussing the interim results of the study of normative and descriptive reasoning models. During the first presentation, three classifications of conditional statements (indicatives) will be considered, and the principles of their operation will be analysed. We will see that in practice such systematisations do not always give the same result. It is known that difficulties concerning modeling conditional connection occur not only in logic, but also in the psychology of reasoning (for example, in the theory of mental models), affecting its experimental work. They also arise due to the fact that we still do not have a clear understanding of what exactly generates a conditional connection in ordinary language statements. The variety of conditionals, which will be discussed, offers another way to think about this problem: it confirms that the conditional connection depends quite heavily on "external" data.

The second talk will provide an overview of the logics that were created to model the so-called framing effect, that is, the effect that captures those preferences, and therefore the result of reasoning, can change depending on how the context is formulated. It is planned to highlight the main strategies for constructing logics of framing, consider their strengths and weaknesses (excessive ontologisation of some psychological effects for successful modeling of others; emphasising the procedure of inference rather than choosing a strategy, etc.). The difficulties concerning constructing logics modeling the framing effect provide another argument in favor of the fact that the content of the concept of framing is still vague.

The study was carried out with a grant from the Russian Scientific Foundation No. 23-18-00695, https://rscf.ru/project/23-18-00695