#586 Marianna Ganapini: Beliefs, Confabulations, Rationalizations, and AI Systems
RECORDED ON NOVEMBER 2nd 2021.
Dr. Marianna Ganapini is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Union College (NY). She works primarily in contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology. She also has related interests in the ethics and epistemology of AI.
In this episode, we talk about beliefs, confabulations, fake news, and AI. We start with beliefs, what they are, and the different approaches in philosophy of mind to try to understand how they work. We get into the concept of belief’s minimal rationality. We discuss the social functions of beliefs. We go through post-hoc rationalizations and confabulations. We try to understand why we confabulate. We ask why we can’t deliberately believe what we want. We get a bit into why people share fake stories online, and the several reasons and motivations behind it. We discuss if it makes sense to ask if people are rational or irrational. Finally, we talk a bit about the implications of AI systems potentially developing some of the psychological abilities we explore in this talk.
Time Links:
Intro
What is belief?
Belief’s minimal rationality
The social functions of beliefs
Post-hoc rationalizations
Confabulations
Why do we confabulate?
Why can’t we deliberately believe what we want?
Why do people share fake stories?
Are people rational?
The psychological abilities of AI systems
Follow Dr. Ganapini’s work!
Follow Dr. Ganapini’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3aTJoW0
Website: https://bit.ly/2PKnzRu
PhilPeople page: https://bit.ly/332AvFe
Twitter handle: @MariannaBergama