New Frameworks of Rationality (DFG-SPP)

The interdisciplinary DFG Special Priority Program New Frameworks of Rationality is dedicated to the study of human rationality.

The programme focuses on two questions: What is meant by "rational"? How rational can people think and decide in their everyday lives? Psychologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists and computer scientists from Germany and abroad are closely networked in this basic research-oriented project to find answers to these fundamental questions.

Together with Prof. Dr. Markus Knauff (Gießen), Dr. Carsten Bäcker has been leading the project Revising Rational Beliefs in Legal Reasoning since the foundation of the SPP in autumn 2011, for which a second funding period was approved in summer 2014. In the project, the rationality of the actors of legal reasoning is put to a psychological test. The project aims to provide empirical material for assessing the limits of the rationality of legal reasoning. From a legal theory perspective, this involves the question of the rationality of trade-offs and the phenomenon of the defeasibility of legal rules. The project ended in 2021.