PHILIPP KORALUS

REASON & INQUIRY

THE EROTETIC THEORY

"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

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

Koralus, P. (2023). Reason and Inquiry: The Erotetic Theory. Oxford University Press.

Madsen, J., Carrella, E., Bailey, R., Koralus, P. (2020). “From reactive toward anticipatory fishing agents.” Journal of Simulation.

Burgess, M. Drexler, M., Axtell, R., et al., Koralus, P., et al. (2020). “Opportunities for agent-based modeling in human dimensions of fisheries.” Fish and Fisheries. 21(3), p.570-587.

Madsen, J., Bailey, R., Carrella, E., Koralus, P. (2019). “Analytic versus computational cognitive models: Agent-based modeling as a tool in cognitive sciences.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(3), pp. 299-305.

Koralus, P. and Mascarenhas, S. (2018). “Illusory inferences in a question-based theory of reasoning.” In: Horn, L. and Turner, K. (Eds.) An Atlas of Meaning (Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface). Brill.

Mascarenhas, S., Koralus, P. (2017). “Illusory inferences with quantifiers.” Thinking & Reasoning, 23(1), pp. 33-48.

Mascarenhas, S. and Koralus, P. (2015). “Illusory inferences: disjunctions, indefinites, and the erotetic theory of reasoning.” In: Noelle, D. C., et al. (Eds.). Proc. 37th Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society.

Koralus, P. and Mascarenhas, S. (2013). “The erotetic theory of reasoning: Bridges between formal semantics and the psychology of propositional deductive inference.” Philosophical Perspectives, 27, pp. 312-365.

Moral judgment and Delusional thinking

Koralus, P. and Alfano, M. (2017). “Reasons-based moral judgment and the erotetic theory.” In: Bonnefon. J.-F. Tremoliere, B. (Eds.). Moral Inferences. Psychology Press: Routledge.

Parrott, M. and Koralus, P. (2015) “The Erotetic Theory of Delusional Thinking.” Journal of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. 20(5), pp. 398-415.

(commentary by John McKay and symposium on http://imperfectcognitions.blogspot.co.uk)

Parkinson, C. Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Koralus, P., Mendelovici, A., McGeer, V. and Wheatley, T. (2011). “Is morality unified? Evidence that distinct neural systems underlie moral judgments of harm, dishonesty, and disgust.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 23(10), pp. 3162-80.

Attention and Perception

Koralus, P. (2016) “Can visual cognitive neuroscience learn anything from the philosophy of language? Ambiguity and the topology of neural network models of multistable perception.” Synthese, 193(5), pp. 1409-32.

Koralus, P. “The erotetic theory of attention: Questions, focus, and distraction.” (2014). Mind & Language, 29(1), pp. 26-50.

(selected for symposium at www.philosophyofbrains.com, replies by Chris Mole, Felipe de Brigard, Sebastian Watzl, et al.)

Koralus, P. (2014). “Attention, Consciousness, and the semantics of questions.” Synthese, 191(2), pp. 187-211.

Language

Koralus, P. (2013). “Descriptions, ambiguity, and representationalist theories of interpretation.” Philosophical Studies, 162(2), pp. 275-290.

Koralus, P. (2013). Review of Jonathan Berg’s Direct Belief. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Koralus, P. (2012). “The open instruction theory of attitude reports and the pragmatics of answers.” Philosopher’s Imprint, Vol. 12(4).

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.