11 February 2008, Logic, Language, and Reasoning Seminar, Johan van Benthem

Is logic about real human reasoning, or about the pure mathematics of valid consequence relations? Frege's famous 'anti-psychologism' drew a sharp distinction, right at a time when modern pyschology started developing exciting ideas about informal and mathematical reasoning. I will argue that such 'barrier theses' are otiose - and that, fortunately, they do not work, since there is an interesting reality of contacts between logic and empirical cognitive science. My examples come mainly from 'natural logic', while I survey some other contacts.

For more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~szymanik/LLR.html