时间：4月9日下午13:30
地点：B915
Title: Reason and Less
报告人：Vinod Goel教授
Vinod Goel，加拿大约克大学心理系教授，是脑高级认知功能领域的全球知名教授，相关研究涉及推理、创造性、问题解决、规划等，以及情绪与高级认知功能的交互。
Vinod Goel教授在全球最早开展了人脑推理的脑成像研究，并进行了一系列开创性的工作，首次对归纳推理及演绎推理的进行了脑内功能定位及功能分离，系列地考察了双侧前额叶在推理中的不同作用，系列地研究了情绪与推理交互作用的脑机制等，相关研究成果发表在了领域顶级国际期刊如Nature Neuroscience、Brain、Trends in Cognitive Science、Cerebral Cortex等，Google引用超过10000次，h指数35。
Abstract:
I've been studying the neural basis of logical reasoning/rationality for the past 20 years within established frameworks. Confined to these frameworks I find myself unable to explain Brexit, Trump, or the behaviour of my teenage daughter. I'm not alone. Perhaps, the issue is that these behaviours are less than fully rational, and therefore beyond our models of rationality. However, most of the cognitive research on rationality is devoted to understanding deviations from rational choice. So we should be able to capture any deviations that occur in these cases. But we can't. Why not?
The problem is that the deviations we study and explain are all cognitive (e.g. belief bias, framing effects, base rate neglect, temporal discounting, etc.). However, while deviations from rationality based on cognitive biases are real and important, they do not convincingly explain:
Why we crave high fat and sugar foods despite health warnings
Why is it that, given only 3% of the American population consists of white men over 6'4" tall, 30% of American Fortune 500 CEOs are white men over 6'4" tall?
Why do many Americans seemingly vote against their self-interest in opposition to universal healthcare?
Even dual mechanism theories do not address this issue. The two mechanisms they are interested in are both cognitive, though one is sometimes conflated with reflex arcs.
Evolutionary psychologists do offer some interesting answers to these questions in terms of instincts or hardwired "modules" In fact they offer a story whereby human behaviour is explained, without postulating rationality, just by the operation of hundreds or thousands of instincts. But such an account does not do justice to the behavioural, brain evolution, and brain development data, nor allow for the generality of thought and "gap" between the antecedent and consequent conditions essential for rationality.
I propose an alternative model whereby brain developmental factors (e.g. diminishing plasticity) constrain our overly idealistic notions of rationality, and noncognitive factors such as instincts, hormones, pathology, and addiction modulate the reasoning engine via emotional valence and arousal pathways. On this account, our system of rationality is real, but it does not "float" on top independent of lower level systems; it tethered to them. Such a model actually takes us back several hundred years, but is supported by the data and does a better job of explaining real-world rationality, including the above noted phenomena, than the current standard models.
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