Philosophy + Literature Workshop with Darci Gardner

Speaker(s): Darci Gardner (Appalachian State University)

 
Join the Philosophy + Literature Workshop for a talk by Darci Gardner (Appalachian State University)
 
RSVP here. Dinner and drinks will be provided.
 
Literature and Cognitive Biases

Professor Darci Gardner's book, tentatively titled Leveraging Irrationality: How Storytellers Exploit Cognitive Biases, argues that some of the same mental shortcuts that lead jurors to condemn innocent defendants and induce voters to believe unreliable sources are also often responsible for our enjoyment of fictions. Cognitive biases and heuristics can cause us to trust deceitful narrators, misidentify culprits in crime mysteries, deem far-fetched events credible, and make other erroneous judgments on which literary masterpieces depend for their success.
 
In the chapter that the Workshop will discuss, “Undue Skepticism,” Gardner explains how and for what aesthetic purpose three survival stories (Life of Pi, Atonement, and Parasite) leverage belief bias to elicit unwarranted doubt. Identifying the literary device that they deploy will elucidate how numerous fictions generate their effects; it may also shed light on how certain real-world narratives elicit undue skepticism, as when fake news leads people to deny history, election results, and science.
 
The reading was circulated by email on Oct. 10. Contact: Myungin sohnm [at] stanford.edu (sohnm[at]stanford[dot]edu) and dlclevents [at] stanford.edu (dlclevents[at]stanford[dot]edu)