What causal conditional reasoning tells us about people's understanding of causality
Thinking and Reasoning 13 (4):426 – 460 (2007)
| Abstract | Causal conditional reasoning means reasoning from a conditional statement that refers to causal content. We argue that data from causal conditional reasoning tasks tell us something not only about how people interpret conditionals, but also about how they interpret causal relations. In particular, three basic principles of people's causal understanding emerge from previous studies: the modal principle, the exhaustive principle, and the equivalence principle. Restricted to the four classic conditional inferences—Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, Denial of the Antecedent, and Affirmation of the Consequent—causal conditional reasoning data are only partially able to support these principles. We present three experiments that use concrete and abstract causal scenarios and combine inference tasks with a new type of task in which people reformulate a given causal situation. The results provide evidence for the proposed representational principles. Implications for theories of the na ve understanding of causality are discussed. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,664 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesStephen E. Newstead (1997). Conditional Reasoning with Realistic Material. Thinking and Reasoning 3 (1):49 – 76.
Paul Thagard (1998). Explaining Disease: Correlations, Causes, and Mechanisms. Minds and Machines 8 (1):61-78.
David H. Sanford (1994). Causation and Intelligibility. Philosophy 69 (267):55-.
Wim de Neys, Walter Schaeken & G. (2005). Working Memory and Everyday Conditional Reasoning: Retrieval and Inhibition of Stored Counterexamples. Thinking and Reasoning 11 (4):349 – 381.
Sieghard Beller & Hans Spada (2003). The Logic of Content Effects in Propositional Reasoning: The Case of Conditional Reasoning with a Point of View. Thinking and Reasoning 9 (4):335 – 378.
Stephane Quinn & Henry Markovits (2002). Conditional Reasoning with Causal Premises: Evidence for a Retrieval Model. Thinking and Reasoning 8 (3):179 – 191.
Sieghard Beller (2008). Deontic Norms, Deontic Reasoning, and Deontic Conditionals. Thinking and Reasoning 14 (4):305 – 341.
Klaus Oberauer, Andrea Weidenfeld & Katrin Fischer (2007). What Makes Us Believe a Conditional? The Roles of Covariation and Causality. Thinking and Reasoning 13 (4):340 – 369.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads12 ( #93,265 of 549,005 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,327 of 549,005 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
