Title: Nothing is Logical

Speaker: Maria Aloni (University of Amsterdam)

Time: Nov. 3rd (Tuesday) 15:10 - 18:00

Location: Teaching Building No.2 (二教) 411

Abstract:

People often reason in ways that deviate from classical logic. An influential idea introduced by Grice is that these deviations are not logical mistakes but rather consequences of pragmatic enrichments derived as the product of rational interactions between cooperative language users. Challenging the Gricean tradition, the core hypothesis behind this research is that many of the enriched interpretations we observe in everyday conversation are not derived by Gricean reasoning, but rather result from biases due to our [human] preference to minimise cognitive effort. I will focus on two such biases: (i) a tendency to avoid emptiness (neglect-zero); and (ii) a negative bias towards the parallel processing of multiple alternatives (no-split). In the talk, after introducing the main hypothesis, I will define bilateral team-based (modal) logics modelling the two biases, present experimental results in support of the main claims and, if time permit, compare the defined logics with related systems (truthmaker semantics, HYPE, inquisitive logics, possibility semantics) via translations into extensions of Modal Information Logics (van Benthem, 1996, 2019).