Dear students and colleagues, I am pleased to announce that on 13 April at 4:00 p.m. (Italian hour) a webinar of prof. Gustavo Cevolani (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca) on “Decisions, Rationality, and Cognitive Biases in Legal Reasoning” will take place on Teams (https://tinyurl.com/25bksu4x) within the cycle of scientific webinars for the MD in Cognitive science and Theory of communication.
Abstract: in the last decades, research in the field of cognitive sciences (with contributions from psychologists, economists, neuroscientists, and philosophers, among others) has revealed the main mechanisms of how we reason and make decisions. Scholars have identified various heuristics that the human brain uses to decide quickly and automatically, as well as various cognitive biases that systematically and predictably may lead us to irrational behaviors and choices when making fast and automatic decisions. These “cognitive pitfalls” are always lurking and often inevitable, affecting both expert decision-makers (such as judges, physicians, educators, and other professionals) and individuals engaged in normal daily activities (i.e., all of us as customers, savers, patients, etc.). Using small thought experiments and concrete examples discussed in the literature, I provide an overview of the main findings in the study of reasoning, decision-making, and cognitive errors with special reference to the domain of legal and forensic reasoning.