Human cognitive neuroscience seminar

Speaker: Aba Szollosi (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Toward non-probabilistic explanations of learning and decision making

Abstract: Referring to probabilistic concepts (such as randomness, sampling, and probability distributions among others) is commonplace in contemporary explanations of how people learn and make decisions in the face of environmental unknowns. I will argue that this practice may and often does conceal essential, non-probabilistic steps that people need to take to attempt to solve the problems that environmental unknowns present. I will illustrate the related issues on a typical decision-making task (a repeated-choice gamble) and propose some potential solutions.