Courses

This course examines 

(A) The domains of human rationality: belief acquisition, inference, and actions;

(B) The deductive method of inference, translations, and basic concepts

(C) Some prevalent failures and their cognitive sources.

Pseudoscience, social misconceptions, and quack medicine are some demonstrations of dubious belief acquisition practices. Violations of logical laws are the sources of inferential failure, and political, financial, and judicial unfairness manifest behavioral irrationality.

The popular explanations of our ubiquitous irrationality tend to use the “usual suspects”: stupidity, ignorance, a temporary mental “hick-up”, or the bad wiring of the human brain. We will dig deeper into the cognitive underpinnings of the phenomena, such as memory reconstruction, necessary heuristics, and emotional equilibrium. 

This course emphasizes the “inference” aspect of rationality. We’ll cover logical concepts such as validity, soundness, incompatibility, inductive strength, and contingency, then proceed with symbolizations and natural deduction proofs in logical languages. Common violations of some rules will be examined in light of our cognitive biases and inferential failures.

This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College. 

Catalog Information: COLL-S 105  FRESHMAN SEMINAR IN N&M

Instructor:

Leah Savion

Email:

lsavion@indiana.edu

Department:

History & Philosophy of Science & Medicine

Leah Savion is a faculty member of the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, and the Cognitive Science departments at Indiana University at Bloomington. Leah has written seven books and many articles, and offered hundreds of presentations and workshops on philosophical, cognitive science, medical errors, and pedagogy related topics in conferences and universities around the world. She continuously develops new courses related to cognitive traps in business, justice, and medicine, and has won numerous teaching awards and grants over the years. Current research topics are: (i) cognitively realistic models of rationality (ii) Belief perseverance and self-deception (iii) Medical pseudoscience (iv) Mental disorders and psychopathy.

GenEd Information: Approved for the Natural & Mathematical Sciences - Natural Sciences requirement of the IU Bloomington General Education program.