Talk Title: From Logical to Causal Inference: Truth, Counterfactual Scope, and Invariance
In this talk Professor Sher will examine the nature of inference by using three parameters: truth (in the strong sense of factual truth or truth in the world), counterfactual scope, and invariance. Focusing on the two traditional extremes of causal and logical inference, she will investigate their similarities and differences in terms of these parameters. What emerges are both certain deep similarities with respect to all these parameters, and certain differences of degree with respect to counterfactual scope and invariance, but not truth.
Gila Sher
I received my B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and my PhD from Columbia University. I am currently a philosophy professor at UCSD. My research interests center on foundational issues in epistemology, logic, and the theory of truth. My books include: The Bounds of Logic: A Generalized Viewpoint (MIT, 1991), Epistemic Friction: An Essay on Knowledge, Truth, and Logic (Oxford, 2016), and Logical Consequence (Cambridge, 2022). I am currently working on a book tentatively titled Truth as a Human Value: A Value Theory of Truth which reconceives the philosophy of truth in light of the post-truth crisis.