This is a reminder for:
Title: Alison Gopnik
Counterfactual cognition: Why what isn’t real really matters
Children and adults understand the rules that govern reality, but they also
know how to leave reality behind. Indeed, a vast amount of our everyday
psychological experience is concerned with that which is not real, as when
we read books, watch movies, daydream, conduct thought experiments, and
experience regret. This is one of the most puzzling aspects of human
cognition, especially in development. At a time in their lives when they
need to absorb vast amounts of information about the way reality works,
children spend a great deal of time engaged in pretend play, which often
looks as though it has nothing to do with reality. Why?
I argue that children pretend because it allows them to exercise one of the
major engines of reasoning and learning in development: counterfactual
reasoning. Although pretending appears to be merely for fun, its underlying
purpose is to strengthen a cognitive tool that children need to draw
conclusions from and about the structure of reality. Recent formal work in
the “Bayesian probabilistic models” framework helps to explain the
significance of counterfactual reasoning for real life inference and
learning. Inferring the evidence that would follow from hypotheses that are
currently taken to be false is crucial both for causal intervention and
Bayesian search.
When: Mon Feb 28 1pm – 2:30pm Eastern Time - Melbourne, Sydney
Where: University of Sydney philosopy common room
Calendar: Current Projects
Who:
* [email protected] - creator
Event details:
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=XzcwcTNhYzlwODUxajZiYTM2ZDBrMmI5azZwMzNpYmExOGNzNGNiYTM4Y29qMmNpMTc0cjQyZDltODggZmV2MWxkcjRsa2h2MDM2b2U0aW4yanR0ZGdAZw
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