F. Paglieri - 'When reasoning errors are not errors of reasoning'

Fabio Paglieri
ISTC-CNR
Science & Philosophy Colloquia
Room XII
Villa Mirafiori - Via Carlo Fea 2 - Roma
Tuesday 13 December 2016 - 10:30-12:30
open to the public
organization
Emiliano Ippoliti & Mirella Capozzi
FILOSOFIA - SAPIENZA
web: WEB.UNIROMA1.IT/LOGIC/S&P
Programme
tuesday
13 December 2016
10:35-10:40 Introduction Emiliano Ippoliti Filosofa - Sapienza
10:45-11:45 When reasoning errors are not errors of reasoning
F. Paglieri ISTC-CNR
11:45-12:00 break
12:00-12:30 debate
chair Emiliano Ippoliti
Description
Two approaches to reasoning errors are most prominent in the scholarly literature: in philosophy, fallacy theory has attempted to systematize argumentative mistakes since the times of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations; in psychology, the experimental study of
systematic errors has been instrumental to the success of Kahneman and Tversky’s “heuristics and biases” programme, and more generally to the development of dual systems theories of reasoning. Interestingly, both approaches face similar challenges: since
Charles Hamblin’s seminal monograph, Fallacies (1970), argumentation theorists have been preoccupied with the problem of “non-fallacious fallacies”, i.e. arguments that superficially have the structure of a fallacy, yet appear justified on reasonable standards of
inference; in parallel, the heuristics and biases programme has been criticized by proponents of ecological rationality (Gerd Gigerenzer) and the argumentative theory of reasoning (Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber), suggesting that people’s alleged mistakes are
often experimental artefacts, due to a misguided attempt to test cognitive skills out of their proper context of application. In this presentation I will critically review both these debates
and discuss a garden variety of argumentative fallacies and reasoning errors, to propose that such incidents, even when they reveal actual mistakes, have little to do with inferential deficits, but rather point to other cognitive shortcomings - namely, attentional biases and
inhibition problems. The implications for critical thinking education are vast, suggesting both an explanation to the poor track record of past efforts and new avenues for improvement.
Fabio Paglieri is a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR) in Rome. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Topoi(Springer) and Sistemi Intelligenti (Il Mulino). He is the author of La cura della ragione (2016) and Saper aspettare (2014, both with Il Mulino), and over 100 papers on decision making, the psychology of reasoning, and argumentation theory.