SSP Forum: Jeff Shrager on Explanation
The
Symbolic Systems Forum
presents
Explanation Illustrated
Jeff Shrager
Symbolic Systems Program
Monday, May 2, 2022
12:15-1:15 pm
Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg. 460), Room 126
NOTE: Due to Covid-19 restrictions on building occupancy, only current Stanford students, faculty, and staff may attend this event live
ABSTRACT:
Explanation is a ubiquitous human activity, but its very ubiquity makes it hard to grasp what explanations are, how they work, and how we learn to produce and understand them. In this discussion I'll describe what natural explanations look like and how they work in a wide range of settings including scientific explanations, parent-child explanations, self-explanations, proofs, biomedical explanations, and explainable AI. My purpose is not to justify a particular theory of explanation -- although I'll point to some such theories along the way -- but instead to serve as a tour guide to some of the fascinating intricacies of how real human explanation works.
Biography: Jeff Shrager is a CommerceNet Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the Symbolic Systems Program. His research focuses on how scientists think and how computational tool can support scientific reasoning, ranging through computer science, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computational and molecular biology, drug discovery, and biomedicine. Jeff has co-founded three biomedical AI startups, and has taught Interaction Analysis (SymSys245) for something like 20 years.
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