KEVIN DORST
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Spring 2021: Rationality


Syllabus​

Readings

Foundations
1/25: (Ir)rationality?:
  (Handout.)
  • Tversky and Kahneman 1974, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases"
  • Cohen 1981, "Can Human Irrationality be Experimentally Demonstrated?"
  • Stich 1985, "Could Man be an Irrational Animal?"  (Focus on §5)

​2/1: Rational Analysis:  (Handout.)
  • Anderson 1990, The Adaptive Character of Thought (Read Chapters 1 and 6)

​Tools
​2.8: Probability
  • Titelbaum 2020, Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology (Read Chapters 2 and 3).  
  • Optional: if you really want to learn this stuff, instead you can read Chapter 1 (and, ideally, 2) of Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis 2008, Introduction to Probability.  And try your hand at some of the problems (answer sheet here).
​​2/15: Decision Theory
  • Thoma 2019, "Decision Theory"
​2/22: Models and Precision: 
  • Easwaran 2020, An Opinionated Introduction to the Philosophical Foundations of Bayesian Epistemology (Chapter 4)
  • Schoenfield 2012, "Chilling out on Epistemic Rationality"  (Handout)

Details
3/1: Hindsight Bias and Motivated Reasoning:
  • Hedden 2019, "Hindsight Bias is Not a Bias"
  • Bright and Kinney 2021, "Risk Aversion and Elite-Group Ignorance"  (Handout)
3/8: Motivated Reasoning: (Handout)
  • Hahn and Harris 2014, "What Does it Mean to be Biased: Motivated Reasoning and Rationality"
3/15: Confirmation Bias I: (Handout)
  • Whittlestone 2017 (Read Ch. 2).  [Optional, but suggested: read the Introduction too]
    • Optional: `Reflections on Confirmation Bias'
  • O'Connor and Weatherall 2018, "Scientific Polarization"
    • Optional: Weisberg response blog posts, 'Mistrust and Polarization' and 'How Scientific is Scientific Polarization?'
3/22: Confirmation Bias II: (Handout)
  • Kelly 2008, "Disagreement, Dogmatism, and Belief Polarization"
  • McWilliams 2019, "Evidentialism and Belief Polarization"
3/29: Biased Assimilation and Self-Deception
  • Mandelbaum 2018, "Troubles with Bayesianism"  (Handout)
  • Gendler 2007, "Self-Deception as Pretense"
4/5: Sunk Costs and the Status Quo 
  • ​Kelly 2004, "Sunk Costs, Rationality, and Acting for the Sake of the Past" (Handout)
  • Nebel 2015, "Status Quo Bias, Rationality, and Conservatism about Value"
4/12: Scarcity and Grit
  • Morton 2017, "Reasoning under Scarcity"
  • Morton and Paul 2019, "Grit" 
4/19: Moral Judgment and Emotion
  • Haidt 2001, "The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail" (Handout)
  • Railton 2014, "The Affective Dog and its Rational Tale: Intuition and Attunement"​
  • Bio
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  • Teaching
  • Public Philosophy
  • Stranger Apologies