Evidence from aphasia is considered that leads to a distinction between abstract and concrete thought processes and hence for a distinction between rules and similarity. It is argued that perceptual classification is inherently a rule-following procedure and these rules are unable to be followed when a patient has difficulty with name comprehension and retrieval.

The social exchange theory of reasoning, which is championed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, falls under the general rubric “evolutionary psychology” and asserts that human reasoning is governed by content-dependent, domain-specific, evolutionarily-derived algorithms. According to Cosmides and Tooby, the presumptive existence of what they call “cheater-detection” algorithms disconfirms the claim that we reason via general-purpose mechanisms or via inductively acquired principles. We contend that the Cosmides/Tooby arguments in favor of domain-specific algorithms or evolutionarily-derived mechanisms fail and that the notion (...) of a social exchange rule, which is central to their theory, is not correctly characterized. As a consequence, whether or not their conclusion is true cannot be established on the basis of the arguments they have presented. (shrink)

When reasoning about deontic rules (what one may, should, or should not do in a given set of circumstances), reasoners adopt a violation‐detection strategy, a strategy they do not adopt when reasoning about indicative rules (descriptions of purported state of affairs). I argue that this indicative‐deontic distinction constitutes a primitive in the cognitive architecture. To support this claim, I show that this distinction emerges early in development, is observed regardless of the cultural background of the reasoner, and can be selectively (...) disrupted at the neurological level. I also argue that this distinction emerged as a result of selective pressure favouring the evolution of reasoning strategies that determine survival within dominance hierarchies. (shrink)

An experiment was conducted to investigate the relative contributions of syntactic form and content to conditional reasoning. The content domain chosen was that of causation. Conditional statements that described causal relationships were embedded in simple arguments whose entailments are governed by the rules -of truth-functional logic. The causal statements differed in terms of the number of alternative causes and disabling conditions that characterized the causal relationship. Subjects were required to judge whether or not each argument’s conclusion could be accepted. Judgments (...) were found to vary systematically with the number of alternative causes and disabling conditions. Conclusions of arguments based on conditionals with few alternative causes or disabling conditions were found to be more accept-able than conclusions based on those with many. (shrink)

In this paper we explore differences in use of the so-called ‘logical’ elements of language such as quantifiers and conditionals, and use this to explain differences in performance in reasoning tasks across subject groups with different educational backgrounds. It is argued that quantified sentences are difficult natural bases for reasoning, and hence more prone to elicit variation in reasoning behaviour, because they are chiefly used with a pre-determined domain in everyday speech. By contrast, it is argued that conditional sentences form (...) natural premises because of the function they serve in everyday speech. Implications of this for the role of logic in modelling human reasoning behaviour are briefly considered. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to show why recent research in the psychology of deductive and probabilistic reasoning does not have.

Recientemente, se ha propuesto que la lógica no es el único factor que incide en el razonamiento condicional y que el valor y la utilidad son otros dos elementos importantes en este sentido. Al respecto, Bonnefon y Sloman añadieron en 2013 que la estructura de los condicionales es, del mismo modo, relevante en la actividad inferencial con condicionales de utilidad y trataron de demostrarlo por medio de varios experimentos. Sus resultados parecieron mostrar que, efectivamente, sus tesis eran correctas. No obstante, (...) plantearon igualmente que su propuesta y, por tanto, sus resultados eran compatibles con una teoría contemporánea de amplio alcance, la teoría de los modelos mentales, y en este artículo se trata de desarrollar esta idea con el propósito de comprobar si es cierta. (shrink)

The mental model theory postulates that reasoners build models of the situations described in premises, and that these models normally represent only what is true. The theory has an unexpected consequence. It predicts the existence ofillusions in inferences. Certain inferences should have compelling but erroneous conclusions. Two experiments corroborated the occurrence of such illusions in inferences about what is possible from disjunctions of quantified assertions, such as, “at least some of the plastic beads are not red.” Experiment 1 showed that (...) participants erroneously inferred that impossible situations were possible, and that possible situations were impossible, but that they performed well with control problems based on the same premises. Experiment 2 corroborated these findings in inferences from assertions based on dyadic relations, such as, “all the boys played with the girls.”. (shrink)

In this article I am going to reconstruct Stephen Toulmin’s procedural theory of concepts and explanations in order to develop two overlooked ideas from his philosophy of science: methods of representations and inferential techniques. I argue that these notions, when properly articulated, could be useful for shedding some light on how scientific reasoning is related to representational structures, concepts, and explanation within scientific practices. I will explore and illustrate these ideas by studying the development of the notion of instantaneous speed (...) during the passage from Galileo’s geometrical physics to analytical mechanics. At the end, I will argue that methods of representations could be considered as constitutive of scientific inference; and I will show how these notions could connect with other similar ideas from contemporary philosophy of science like those of models and model-based reasoning. (shrink)

Reasoning research has focussed mainly on the type of cognitive processes involved when representing premises and when producing conclusions. But less is known about the factors that guide these representational and inferential processes. What premises are actually taken as input in reasoning? And what conclusions are intended? In this paper it is argued that considerations of relevance (Sperber and Wilson, Relevance: communication and cognition. Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) are helpful for addressing these issues as a pragmatic analysis of two sorts of (...) tasks is carried out, Wason’s 2-4-6 problem (Study 1) and a conditional reasoning problem (Study 2). Study 1 indicates that the way this task is communicated may encourage participants to consider misleading information as highly relevant for solving it. Two experiments go on to show that when the relevance of misleading information is contextually diminished, participants are more efficient at providing the correct solution. Study 2 compares the production rate of two sorts of conclusions: logically valid but weakly relevant conclusions and invalid but relevant and pragmatically justified conclusions. This study shows that the relevance of conclusions determines to a large extent whether or not they will be produced. (shrink)

Using normative correctness as a diagnostic tool reduces the outcome of complex cognitive functions to a binary classification (normative or non-normative). It also focuses attention on outcomes, rather than processes, impeding the development of good cognitive theories. Given that both normative and non-normative responses may be produced by the same process, normativity is a poor indicator of underlying processes.

The aim of this paper is to describe a methodology for revising logical principles in the light of empirical psychological findings. Historical philosophy of science and wide reflective equilibrium in ethics are considered as providing possible models for arguing from the descriptive to the normative. Neither is adequate for the psychology/logic case, and a new model is constructed, employing criteria for evaluating inferential systems. Once we have such criteria, the notion of reflective equilibrium becomes redundant.