Cognition and Chance

Cognition and Chance PDF Author: Raymond S. Nickerson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 113561461X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 798

Get Book

Book Description
Lack of ability to think probabilistically makes one prone to a variety of irrational fears and vulnerable to scams designed to exploit probabilistic naiveté, impairs decision making under uncertainty, facilitates the misinterpretation of statistical information, and precludes critical evaluation of likelihood claims. Cognition and Chance presents an overview of the information needed to avoid such pitfalls and to assess and respond to probabilistic situations in a rational way. Dr. Nickerson investigates such questions as how good individuals are at thinking probabilistically and how consistent their reasoning under uncertainty is with principles of mathematical statistics and probability theory. He reviews evidence that has been produced in researchers' attempts to investigate these and similar types of questions. Seven conceptual chapters address such topics as probability, chance, randomness, coincidences, inverse probability, paradoxes, dilemmas, and statistics. The remaining five chapters focus on empirical studies of individuals' abilities and limitations as probabilistic thinkers. Topics include estimation and prediction, perception of covariation, choice under uncertainty, and people as intuitive probabilists. Cognition and Chance is intended to appeal to researchers and students in the areas of probability, statistics, psychology, business, economics, decision theory, and social dilemmas.

Cognition and Chance

Cognition and Chance PDF Author: Raymond S. Nickerson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 113561461X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 798

Get Book

Book Description
Lack of ability to think probabilistically makes one prone to a variety of irrational fears and vulnerable to scams designed to exploit probabilistic naiveté, impairs decision making under uncertainty, facilitates the misinterpretation of statistical information, and precludes critical evaluation of likelihood claims. Cognition and Chance presents an overview of the information needed to avoid such pitfalls and to assess and respond to probabilistic situations in a rational way. Dr. Nickerson investigates such questions as how good individuals are at thinking probabilistically and how consistent their reasoning under uncertainty is with principles of mathematical statistics and probability theory. He reviews evidence that has been produced in researchers' attempts to investigate these and similar types of questions. Seven conceptual chapters address such topics as probability, chance, randomness, coincidences, inverse probability, paradoxes, dilemmas, and statistics. The remaining five chapters focus on empirical studies of individuals' abilities and limitations as probabilistic thinkers. Topics include estimation and prediction, perception of covariation, choice under uncertainty, and people as intuitive probabilists. Cognition and Chance is intended to appeal to researchers and students in the areas of probability, statistics, psychology, business, economics, decision theory, and social dilemmas.

Cognition and Chance

Cognition and Chance PDF Author: Raymond S. Nickerson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135614628
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Get Book

Book Description
This book presents an overview of the necessary information needed to make educational assumptions about the statistical or probable characteristics of a situation. The book can be used as a supplemental text in courses on probability, logic, statistics,

Seeking Chances

Seeking Chances PDF Author: Emanuele Bardone
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642196330
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book

Book Description
One of the most distinguishing abilities that human beings display is the ability of turning almost everything into a clue to make a problem affordable in relation to what one knows and, most of all, to what one does not know. That is what characterizes humans as chance seekers. A poor pattern of reasoning and even our ignorance may help us make a decision, and eventually solve a problem. This is the rationale of biased rationality. However, not everything leads us always to a good decision. Some people are not satisfied with weak arguments or it-is-just-so strategies. They want something better. This second attitude points to a different form of rationality that takes advantage of the idea of distributed cognition. Basically, human beings improve their survival strategies by building cognitive niches capable of delivering potentially ever more symptomatic information. It is through various manipulations of the environment that we gain new and more reliable chances which can be used to de-bias our rationality. Through the laborious activity of cognitive niche construction, we come up with situations in which we are better afforded by our environment, and thus biases or fallacies cease to be appealing.

Cognition and Conditionals

Cognition and Conditionals PDF Author: Mike Oaksford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book

Book Description
"The conditional, if ... then, is probably the most important term in natural language and forms the core of systems of logic and mental representation. It occurs in all human languages and allows people to express their knowledge of the causal or law-like structure of the world and of others' behaviour, e.g., if you turn the key the car starts, if John walks the dog he stops for a pint of beer; to make promises, e.g., if you cook tonight, I'll wash up all week; to regulate behaviour, e.g., if you are drinking beer, you must be over 18 years of age; to suggest what would have happened had things been different, e.g., if the match had been dry it would have lit, among many other possible uses. The way in which the conditional is modelled also determines the core of most logical systems. Unsurprisingly, it is also the most researched expression in the psychology of human reasoning. Cognition and Conditionals is the first volume for over 20 years (On Conditionals, 1986, CUP) that brings together recent developments in the cognitive science and psychology of conditional reasoning. Over the last 10 to 15 years, research on conditionals has come to dominate the psychology of reasoning providing a rich seam of results that have created new theoretical possibilities. This book shows how these developments have led researchers to view people's conditional reasoning behaviour more as succesful probabilistic reasoning rather than as errorful logical reasoning. It shows how the multifarious, and apparently competing, theoretical positions developed over the last 50 years in this area - mental logics, mental models, heuristic approaches, dual process theory, and probabilistic approaches-have responded to these insights. Its organisation reflects the view that an integrative approach is emerging that may need to exploit aspects of all these theoretical positions to explain the rich and complex phenomenon of reasoning with conditionals. It includes an introductory chapter relating the development of the psychology of reasoning to developments in the logic and semantics of the conditional. It also includes chapters by many of the leading figures in this field. Cognition and Conditionals will be a valuable resource for cognitive scientists, psychologists and philosophers interested how people actually reason with conditionals"--Provided by publisher.

The Probabilistic Mind

The Probabilistic Mind PDF Author: Nick Chater
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199216096
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 535

Get Book

Book Description
The Probabilistic Mind is a follow-up to the influential and highly cited Rational Models of Cognition (OUP, 1998). It brings together developmetns in understanding how, and how far, high-level cognitive processes can be understood in rational terms, and particularly using probabilistic Bayesian methods.

Ignorant Cognition

Ignorant Cognition PDF Author: Selene Arfini
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030143627
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive philosophical investigation of ignorance. Using a set of cognitive tools and models, it discusses features that can describe a state of ignorance if linked to a particular type of cognition affecting the agent’s social behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author defines ignorance as a cognitive condition that can be either passively (and unconsciously) borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations (which can be any lack of knowledge, belief, information or data) that affect the agent’s behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author subsequently describes the ephemeral nature of ignorance, its tenacity in the development of human inferential and cognitive performance, and the possibility of sharing ignorance among human agents within the social dimension. By combining previous frameworks such as the naturalization of logic, the eco-cognitive perspective in philosophy and concepts from Peircean epistemology, and adding original ideas derived from the author’s own research and reflections, the book develops a new cognitive framework to help understand the nature of ignorance and its influence on the human condition.

A Functional Theory of Cognition

A Functional Theory of Cognition PDF Author: Norman H. Anderson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317779002
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book

Book Description
A unified, general theory of functional cognition is presented in this book. Its generality appears in the titles of the 13 chapters listed below. Its unity appears in the effectiveness of the same methods and concepts across all of these areas. Generality and unity both stem from the foundation axiom of purposiveness. The axiom of purposiveness has been made effective through capability for functional measurement of values, which embody the goal-directed character of purposiveness. This measurement capability is based on the general cognitive algebra established in information integration theory. Functional theory can thus be made precise and effective near the level of everyday phenomenology. The book is written at a relatively simple level, directed at readers in every field of psychology. Among its characteristics are: * self-sufficient theory near the level of everyday phenomenology; * foundation on structure of the internal world; and * solid grounding in experimental analysis.

Children’s Logical and Mathematical Cognition

Children’s Logical and Mathematical Cognition PDF Author: C.J. Brainerd
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 146139466X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book

Book Description
For some time now, the study of cognitive development has been far and away the most active discipline within developmental psychology. Although there would be much disagreement as to the exact proportion of papers published in developmen tal journals that could be considered cognitive, 50% seems like a conservative estimate. Hence, a series of scholarly books to be devoted to work in cognitive development is especially appropriate at this time. The Springer Series in Cognitive Development contains two basic types of books, namely, edited collections of original chapters by several authors, and original volumes written by one author or a small group of authors. The flagship for the Springer Series will be a serial publication of the "advances" type, carrying the subtitle Progress in Cognitive Development Research. Each volume in the Progress sequence will be strongly thematic, in that it will be limited to some well-defined domain of cognitive-developmental research (e. g. , logical and mathematical de velopment, semantic development). All Progress volumes will be edited collec tions. Editors of such collections, upon consultation with the Series Editor, may elect to have their books published either as contributions to the Progress sequence or as separate volumes. All books written by one author or a small group of authors will be published as separate volumes within the series. A fairly broad definition of cognitive development is being used in the selection of books for this series.

Abductive Cognition

Abductive Cognition PDF Author: Lorenzo Magnani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642036317
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 549

Get Book

Book Description
This volume explores abductive cognition, an important but, at least until the third quarter of the last century, neglected topic in cognition. It aims at increasing knowledge about creative and expert inferences.

The Intuitive Sources of Probabilistic Thinking in Children

The Intuitive Sources of Probabilistic Thinking in Children PDF Author: H. Fischbein
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401018588
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book

Book Description
About a year ago I promised my friend Fischbein a preface to his book of which I knew the French manuscript. Now with the printer's proofs under my eyes I like the book even better than I did then, because of, and influenced by, new experiences in the meantime, and fresh thoughts that crossed my mind. Have I been influenced by what I remembered from the manuscript? If so, it must have happened unconsciously. But of course, what struck me in this work a year ago, struck a responsive chord in my own mind. In the past, mathematics teaching theory has strongly been influenced by a view on mathematics as a heap of concepts, and on learning mathematics as concepts attainment. Mathematics teaching practice has been jeopardised by this theoretical approach, which in its most dangerous form expresses itself as a radical atomism. To concepts attainment Fischbein opposes acquisition of intuitions. In my own publications I avoided the word "intuition" because of the variety of its meanings across languages. For some time I have used the term "constitution of mathematical objects", which I think means the same as Fischbein's "acquisition of intuitions" - indeed as I view it, constituting a mental object precedes its conceptualising, and under this viewpoint I tried to observe mathematical activities of young children.