Events & News
Cog Sci Brown Bag Seminar
| Category | Lecture |
| Date | Friday, April 24, 2009 |
| Time | 12:00 pm |
| Location | GS 906 |
| Speaker | Tania Lombrozo |
| Title | Assistant Professor |
| Affiliation | Dept of Psychology, Univ. California - Berkeley |
Causal and Explanatory Pluralism
What counts as an explanation? And how does the way we explain impact cognition? These are the questions I will explore in my talk. Specifically, I will consider the hypothesis that there are multiple kinds of explanations, akin to Aristotle's efficient and final causes, and that these different explanations reflect different ways of reasoning, akin to the philosopher Daniel Dennett's "physical stance" and "design stance." I'll present evidence concerning people's explanatory preferences, categorization, and causal judgments.