18 - 19 November 2016, Workshop 'The relevance of logic for human reasoning', Munich, Germany

Much has been discussed lately about the relevance of formal logic (including probability theory) to the normativity of reasoning, as well as to the psychology of reasoning. Is it correct to diagnose human ratiocinative/argumentative performance as rational or irrational on the basis of claims about logical validity or consistency? Does the fact that we sometimes fail to comply to certain logical standards in an apparently rational way show that logic is irrelevant to the norms of thought? Following Harman (1986), one might reach the conclusion that logic is not specially relevant to reasoning after all. Or, maybe, logic is specially relevant to human reasoning -- but not in the way we initially thought. Relatedly, logic and probability theory are extensively used by psychologists to model and make predictions about inferential performances. The workshop is intended to foster investigation about these and related topics.