Reasoning, Language, and the Limits of Rationality

Humans have never lived in reality, they live in representations of reality. Myths, narratives, and arts have always carried more power than bare facts. What AI changes is the scale: for the first time, a technology can produce language, images, and personas that imitate human meaning-making with industrial efficiency. It is able to exploit, at scale, our deepest cognitive and emotional needs. Drawing on Aristotle, Plato, Baudrillard, Barthes, and Ricoeur, this course examines how meaning is constructed, why compelling representations beat inconvenient truths, and what rigorous thinking actually requires in an environment designed to short-circuit judgment. You will develop the logical tools to dissect arguments and detect fallacies. But the deeper question is what distinguishes a representation that illuminates from one that captures: what makes a myth generative, and what makes it a cage.