Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas 343 | Tom Griffiths on The Laws of Thought
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Feb 9, 2026 
Tom Griffiths, Princeton professor and author exploring computational cognitive science. He discusses whether mathematical principles can characterize thought. He traces logic from Aristotle and Boole to probabilistic reasoning. He covers Bayesian views, resource-rational heuristics, sampling strategies, inductive biases, and how human cognition compares with modern AI.
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Probability Extends Classical Logic
- Bayes' theorem and probability generalize logic by assigning degrees of belief to possible worlds.
- Logic remains valid as the special case where probabilities are one or zero.
Leibniz's Numbered Language Experiment
- Leibniz tried representing concepts as strings of numbers to reduce reasoning to arithmetic.
- He got some syllogisms to work but never completed the program.
Boole Bridged Logic And Probability
- George Boole formalized Aristotle's syllogisms into algebra and also developed probability ideas.
- He treated the laws of thought as mathematical truths rather than descriptions of actual human reasoning.
