The Munich part (PF 740/2-1, leader: Dr.
Niki Pfeifer) and the Dortmund part (KE 1413/5-1, leader: Prof. Dr.
Gabriele Kern-Isberner) of the DFG project
"Rational reasoning with conditionals and probabilities. Logical foundations and empirical evaluations" are part of the DFG Priority Programme 1516 "
New Frameworks of Rationality".
Project Abstract
Title: Rational reasoning with conditionals and
probabilities. Logical foundations and empirical evaluation
Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Gabriele Kern-Isberner (TU Dortmund) & Dr. Niki
Pfeifer (LMU Munich)
Funding: German Research Foundation (Priority program "New Frameworks of Rationality")
Duration: Three years
Start: TBA
Web: http://www.pfeifer-research.de/spp.html
Abstract: This project combines
logic-based theories of
rationality provided by nonmonotonic logics and approaches to
conditional reasoning, and
probabilistic theories of
rationality based on coherence approaches and the principle of
maximum entropy. Conditionals will serve as a common interface between
all these approaches, since they encode crucial guidelines for
rational reasoning and can be used both in a qualitative and in a
probabilistic way. This provides a unifying perspective on rationality
that helps to overcome the limits of specific frameworks and also
allows for taking information from the environment into account. We
aim to extend axiomatic systems of nonmonotonic logics (like system P)
to better approximate rational reasoning. In particular, the theory of
conditional structures shall be used to develop formal models of
rational conditional reasoning, both in qualitative and probabilistic
frameworks. On the probabilistic side, the coherence approach will be
utilized and extended to investigate formally and empirically current
psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. The
descriptive value of the formal models shall be evaluated with respect
to people's understanding and reasoning with uncertain
conditionals. Moreover, the relevance of the methods to be developed
in this project to causal and counterfactual reasoning and for belief
revision shall be investigated.