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FW: Oaksford & Chater/Bayesian Rationality: BBS Call for Commentators

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Nick Thompson

FW: Oaksford & Chater/Bayesian Rationality: BBS Call for Commentators

All,

Given our recent conversations about Bayes, I thought this might interest
somebody.

Does anybody had a sense of where B and B S is headed these days?

I got a request for my credentials as a reviewer that was longer than any
review I might potentially write.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)

> [Original Message]
> From: Behavioral & Brain Sciences <calls at bbsonline.org>
> To: <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> Date: 3/21/2008 3:12:17 AM
> Subject: Oaksford & Chater/Bayesian Rationality: BBS Call for
Commentators

>
> Dear Dr. Thompson,
>
>
> ==================================================================
> BBS MULTIPLE BOOK REVIEW -- CALL RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS
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>
> Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for
> commentary and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new
> Online Commentary Proposal System at the following URL:
>
>

http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/commentary/commproposal?authordir=Oaksford-031
32008.ACC
>
> * If you only wish to suggest potential commentators, please ignore
prompts to
> submit a proposal with expertise information.
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> * Please respond to this Call no later than April 11, 2008
>
> NOTE: Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is an international,
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> ==================================================================
> ** Multiple Book Review Information **
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>
> Below is a link to the forthcoming pr?cis of a book accepted for Multiple

Book Review
> in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS). Please note that it is the
*BOOK*, not the
> precis, that is to be reviewed.
>
> BOOK: Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning
>
> PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, 2007
>
> AUTHORS: Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater
>
> ABSTRACT: According to Aristotle humans are the rational animal. The
borderline between rationality and
> irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the
law, mental health, and language
> interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply
embedded in the Western intellectual
> tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning
according to the rules of logic?the
> formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with
certainty between propositions.
> Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining the end-point of cognitive
development; and contemporary
> psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against
logical standards.
>
> Bayesian Rationality argues that rationality is defined instead by the
ability to reason about uncertainty.
> While people are typically poor at numerical reasoning about probability,
human thought is sensitive to
> subtle patterns of qualitative Bayesian, probabilistic reasoning. In
Chapter 1?4 of Bayesian Rationality,
> the case is made that cognition in general, and human everyday reasoning
in particular, is best viewed as
> solving probabilistic, rather than logical, inference problems. In
chapters 5?7 the psychology of
> ?deductive? reasoning is tackled head-on: it is argued that purportedly
?logical? reasoning problems,
> revealing apparently irrational behaviour, are better understood from a
probabilistic point of view. Data
> from conditional reasoning, Wason?s selection task, and syllogistic
inference are captured by recasting
> these problems probabilistically. The probabilistic approach makes a
variety of novel predictions which
> have been experimentally confirmed. The book considers the implications
of this work, and the wider
> ?probabilistic turn? in cognitive science and artificial intelligence,
for understanding human rationality.
>
> Keywords: Reasoning, rationality, logic, probability, Bayes theorem,
rational analysis, selection task,

> syllogisms, conditional inference, non-monotonic reasoning
>
> PRECIS: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Oaksford-03132008/Referees/
>
>
>
> ==================================================================
> BBS MULTIPLE BOOK REVIEW -- CALL RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS
> ==================================================================
>
> Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for
> commentary and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new
> Online Commentary Proposal System at the following URL:
>
>

> follow the instructions linked below:
>
> http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/associnst.html
>
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