Workshop on Metacognition, Belief Change and Conditionals: Qualitative and Quantitative Perspectives

Workshop on Metacognition, Belief Change and Conditionals

11-12 September 2009

Department of Philosophy

Institute of Advanced Studies (Verdon-Smith room)

University of Bristol, UK

Metacognition, i.e. "thinking about thinking" or introspection, is a crucial topic in various areas of philosophy. Metacognitive processes involving conditionals are of particular interest: e.g., if an indicative conditional is accepted by a rational agent, this seems to express something about the agent's state of mind. Is accepting a conditional therefore always metacognitive? What are the rational acceptance conditions of conditionals that describe an agent's state of mind explicitly? How should one update one's beliefs in the light of introspective information?

The main goal of this workshop is to explore the logical and epistemic relationships between metacognition, belief change, and conditionals. Formal Epistemology, with its qualitative (epistemic logic, belief revision, ranking functions) and quantitative (probability theory) accounts of belief states and belief change offers a good framework for gaining a better understanding of all normative aspects of metacognition. At the same time, new empirical findings on metacognition might call our established philosophical theories into question.

The following is the schedule for the event:

Friday, 11 September

14.00-15.00, Richard Bradley (London School of Economics, UK)

15.00-16.00, Igor Douven (University of Leuven, Belgium)

--Coffee break--

16.30-17.30, Andre Fuhrmann (Goethe Universitaet, Frankfurt, Germany)

17.30-18.30, Simone Duca (University of Bristol, UK)

18.30- 20 Pub

20.00 Dinner at Sands Restaurant

Saturday, 12 September

9.30-10.30, Paul Egre (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris)

--Coffee break--

11.00-12.00, Hans Rott (University of Regensburg, Germany)

12.00-13.00, Sten Lindstrom (University of Umea, Sweden)

 

You can have a look at the workshop poster here.

 

A collection of invited papers on the topic of the workshop will be published as a special issue of the journal Topoi in early 2011. So far, contributors to the issue include Richard Bradley, Igor Douven, Simone Duca, Paul Egre', Alan Hajek and Sten Lindstrom.

This event is organised with the kind support of the European Science Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Bristol.

For further info please email Simone Duca at plxsd@bris.ac.uk or check http://Simone.Duca.googlepages.com/home