Conditional reasoning and causation
Abstract |
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 (if (cause>, then (effect>) were embedded in simple arguments whose entailments are governed by the rules -oftruth-functional logic (i.e., modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, and affirming the consequent). The causal statements differed in terms ofthe number of alternative causes and disabling conditions that characterized the causal relationship. (A disabling condition is an event that prevents an effect from occurring even though a relevant cause is present.) 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 conditionswerefoun~d:tobe-rnore accept~ able than cdnclusions based on those with many.
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Conditionals: A Theory of Meaning, Pragmatics, and Inference.Philip Johnson-Laird & Ruth M. J. Byrne - 2002 - Psychological Review 109 (4):646-678.
The Mental Representation of Causal Conditional Reasoning: Mental Models or Causal Models.Nilufa Ali, Nick Chater & Mike Oaksford - 2011 - Cognition 119 (3):403-418.
Causal Argument.Ulrike Hahn, Frank Zenker & Roland Bluhm - 2017 - In Michael R. Waldmann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 475-494.
Conditionals, Context, and the Suppression Effect.Fabrizio Cariani & Lance J. Rips - 2017 - Cognitive Science 41 (3):540-589.
Naive Causality: A Mental Model Theory of Causal Meaning and Reasoning.Eugenia Goldvarg & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2001 - Cognitive Science 25 (4):565-610.
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