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REASON & INQUIRY

THE EROTETIC THEORY
Reason & Inquiry book cover

"Reason and Inquiry is a major contribution to the philosophy of mind, the psychology of reasoning, and cognitive science, with implications for linguistics, epistemology, and decision theory. The erotetic theory looks set to be a key player in future debates on the nature of rationality."

TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON

Wykeham Professor of Logic

 University of Oxford

 

"An insightful treatment of reason and rationality, explaining many puzzles and integrating many viewpoints."

STEVEN PINKER

Johnstone Professor of Psychology

Harvard University

 

"It is easy for researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to get excited with our technical achievements and lose track of the big questions: what is intelligence, and how does it work? This thought provoking and wide-ranging book prompts us to look again at our field: to revisit the most basic questions surrounding our endeavour, and, perhaps most importantly, to consider new directions for the future."

MICHAEL WOOLDRIDGE

Co-Director for AI

The Alan Turing Institute

 

My Books
About
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ABOUT 

Fulford Clarendon Associate Professor

of Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science

University of Oxford

Senior Research Associate

Institute for Ethics of AI

University of Oxford 

Fulford Fellow

St. Catherine's College

 

Ph.D. (Philosophy and Neuroscience) Princeton University 

B.A. Pomona College 

My main interest is the human capacity for reasoning and decision-making. My recent book Reason and Inquiry presents a theory of this capacity and its two-faced nature: On the one hand, we are subject to systematic fallacies and framing effects, empirically documented in psychology and behavioural economics. On the other hand, we largely get things right and are capable of incredible feats of rationality. I argue that our minds naturally aim at resolving issues or answering questions as directly as possible, and if we are inquisitive enough in the process, we can get the kind of rationality required for science, philosophy, and classical economic agents as a special case. I am also interested moral judgment and in definitions of general intelligence, both in humans and in artificial intelligence (AI). I regularly collaborate with computer scientists on formal work on these topics. I have also had many past collaborations with colleagues from psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and environmental systems.

 

[CV]

Events
Updates

January 17, 2023    First meeting of "A Theory of Reason" graduate seminar with Sean Moss (Computer Science) 

Research

Reasoning and Decision-Making

Moral judgment and Delusional thinking

Attention and Perception

Language

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Teaching

I regularly offer the following graduate seminars:

  • A Theory of Reason: Philosophy, Psychology, and Algorithms

  • Topics in Minds and Machines: Perception, Cognition, and AI

I regularly offer undergraduate instruction on the following, among other topics:

  • Philosophy of Cognitive Science

  • Philosophy of AI

I have offered doctoral supervision in both philosophy and computer science in a variety of topics including language, consciousness, and moral judgment.

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