Johan van Benthem, Philosophy Department, Stanford University, and Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam
Title: "Logic and Reasoning: Do the Facts Matter?"
ABSTRACT:
Wilkie Collins(The Moonstone, 1868):
"Facts?" he repeated. "Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you'll get over the weakness of believing in facts! Foul play, sir!"
Logic arose in Antiquity from two sources: the study of argumentation in the dialectical tradition, and that of axiomatic proof patterns in scientific inquiry. Over the centuries that followed, the discipline turned highly mathematical. Is logic still about human reasoning? Or is it about eternal propositions, firmly cleansed from any stains, smells, or sounds that human inferences might have -- and therefore also of their colors, and tantalizing twists and kinks? We will discuss some (non-)contacts between logic and psychology in the 20th century, including the famous 'Barrier Thesis' by Frege, Russell and others, that logic is by definition disjoint from psychology. But then, we discuss some recent exciting connections between the two disciplines which suggest otherwise -- showing that logic, psychology and cognitive science have a lot of common ground in the study of reasoning, rational agency, and intelligent interaction.