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Oaksford & Chater's theory of reasoning: High prior, lower posterior plausibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Klaus Oberauer
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 ITU, United Kingdom. k.oberauer@bristol.ac.ukhttp://psychology.psy.bris.ac.uk/people/klausoberauer.htm

Abstract

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) subscribe to the view that a conditional expresses a high conditional probability of the consequent, given the antecedent, but they model conditionals as expressing a dependency between antecedent and consequent. Therefore, their model is inconsistent with their theoretical commitment. The model is also inconsistent with some findings on how people interpret conditionals and how they reason from them.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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