Scientific Reasoning (Psychology)

Declerck, G., Charlet, J. (2011). Intelligence Artificielle, ontologies et connaissances en médecine. Les limites de la mécanisation de la pensée

by Gunnar Declerck

Prepublication version
Complete reference :
Declerck, G., Charlet, J. (2011). Intelligence Artificielle, ontologies et connaissances en médecine. Les limites de la mécanisation de la pensée. Revue d’Intelligence Artificielle (RIA), vol. 25, n°4, pp. 445-472, n° spécial « Intelligence artificielle et santé »

This theoretical article aims to draw up an inventory of the latest advances in medical knowledge engineering in the... more This theoretical article aims to draw up an inventory of the latest advances in medical knowledge engineering in the specific area of ontologies and knowledge based systems design. Echoing the debates that animated the landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the 1970s under the impetus of Dreyfus HL, it aims to show that most of the difficulties currently faced by medical knowledge engineering are inherent in the nature of AI, whose project is the mechanization of cognitive activity. As such it promotes the idea that only a fair understanding of what machines can do, given their machinic character itself, and remains, despite its cognitive finitude, a property of human being, may offer to balancing the scales between tasks that can be allocated to machines and those that have to be left in charge of humans.

Evolved cognitive biases and the epistemic status of scientific beliefs

by Helen De Cruz

Co-authored with Johan De Smedt, Philosophical Studies, 2012

Our ability for scientific reasoning is a byproduct of cognitive faculties that evolved in response to problems... more Our ability for scientific reasoning is a byproduct of cognitive faculties that evolved in response to problems related to survival and reproduction. Does this observation increase the epistemic standing of science, or should we treat scientific knowledge with suspicion? The conclusions one draws from applying evolutionary theory to scientific beliefs depend to an important extent on the validity of evolutionary arguments (EAs) or evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs). In this paper we show through an analytical model that cultural transmission of scientific knowledge can lead toward representations that are more truth-approximating or more efficient at solving science-related problems under a broad range of circumstances, even under conditions where human cognitive faculties would be further off the mark than they actually are.

Olga Pombo & Alexander Gerner (Eds.). Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery. Lisbon: Publidisa, 2007

by Alexander Gerner

Can science tell us what's objectively true?

by Brian Earp

Earp, B. D. (2011). Can science tell us what’s objectively true? The New Collection, Vol. 6., No. 1, 1-9. Featured article in the graduate journal of New College, Oxford.

Can science tell us what’s objectively true? Or is it merely a clever way to cure doubt – to give us something to... more Can science tell us what’s objectively true? Or is it merely a clever way to cure doubt – to give us something to believe in, whether it’s true or not? In this essay, I look at the pragmatist account of science expounded by Charles Sanders Peirce in his 1877 essay, ‘The Fixation of Belief’. Against Peirce, I argue that science does not come naturally to our species, nor does the doubting open-mindedness upon which its practice relies. To the extent that science is successful in ‘curing’ doubt, it’s because it tracks the real state of the world; and I argue that Peirce himself – his pragmatist narrative notwithstanding – is implicitly committed to this view as well.