Anthia Solaki: Bridging Epistemic Logic and Resource-Bounded Human Reasoning
Channel: Dipartimento di Filosofia 'Piero Martinetti'
Date: 2020-08-26

Anthia Solaki - University of Amsterdam

May 27, 2020, h. 17:00-19:00. 



Abstract: 
Standard epistemic logic suffers from the problem of logical omniscience: its agents are perfect reasoners with unlimited inferential power. We argue that, even from a normative point of view, this modelling is inadequate for it sets requirements that cannot be actually attained, according to solid empirical evidence on performance of humans in reasoning tasks. We therefore design a non-standard framework in line with experimental findings about the cognitive effort involved in deductive reasoning. Inspired by Dynamic Epistemic Logic, we work with dynamic operators denoting explicit applications of inference rules in our logical language. Our models are supplemented by (a) impossible worlds (not closed under logical consequence), and (b) quantitative components capturing the agent's cognitive capacity and the cognitive costs of rules with respect to certain resources (e.g. memory, time). These ingredients allow us to avoid problematic logical closure principles and at the same time account for (limited) reasoning steps. We further show that our models can be reduced to awareness-like structures; this allows for useful technical results like a sound and complete axiomatization. We finally discuss how this approach can be combined with actions of external information, and result in a more cognitively plausible modelling of group reasoning as well.
Organization: The Logic Seminar - Department of Philososophy "Piero Martinetti" - University of Milan.