Reasoning in Context

Mariam Thalos (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Abstract. The concept of intelligence has been difficult to get one’s arms around. Surprisingly, the same can be said also of a wide-scope conception of reasoning. This talk aims at shedding some light on certain aspects of reasoning for practical life. This will put us in a better position to make some comparisons between (some aspects of) human reasoning, and what Large Language Models (LLMs) are doing - they look to be doing quite different things.  By articulating an account of the basic machinery required for reasoning, we will be able to pose questions about whether this current generation of AI models is capable of moving past their present obstacles to reasoning.

Speaker Bio: Mariam Thalos is the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities at the University of Guelph.  A Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee since 2018, she is a philosopher of science with a broad spectrum of interests in the physical, decisional and human sciences.  Her forthcoming book with Routledge is entitled Reasoning in the Wild.