8 June 2023, The Utrecht Logic in Progress Series (TULIPS), Franz Berto

Abstract: Framing effects concern the having of different attitudes towards logically or necessarily equivalent propositions. Framing is of crucial importance for cognitive science, behavioral economics, decision theory, and the social sciences at large. We need a logic of framing.

We argue that framing is grounded in (i) the structural distinction between beliefs activated in working memory and beliefs left inactive in long term memory, and (ii) the topic- or subject matter-sensitivity of thought: a feature of propositional attitudes which is attracting growing research attention in the literature.

We introduce a class of models featuring (i) and (ii) to represent, and reason about, agents whose belief states can be subject to framing effects. We axiomatize a logic which we prove to be sound and complete with respect to the class.