Cognition 86 (3):223--251 (2003)
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Abstract |
In the semantics of natural language, quantification may have received more attention than any other subject, and one of the main topics in psychological studies on deductive reasoning is syllogistic inference, which is just a restricted form of reasoning with quantifiers. But thus far the semantical and psychological enterprises have remained disconnected. This paper aims to show how our understanding of syllogistic reasoning may benefit from semantical research on quantification. I present a very simple logic that pivots on the monotonicity properties of quantified statements - properties that are known to be crucial not only to quantification but to a much wider range of semantical phenomena. This logic is shown to account for the experimental evidence available in the literature as well as for the data from a new experiment with cardinal quantifiers ("at least n" and "at most n"), which cannot be explained by any other theory of syllogistic reasoning
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Keywords | generalised monotonicity quantifiers reasonings syllogistic |
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DOI | 10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00180-4 |
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References found in this work BETA
Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language.John Barwise & Robin Cooper - 1981 - Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (2):159--219.
The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task.Leda Cosmides - 1989 - Cognition 31 (3):187-276.
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Citations of this work BETA
Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory.Dan Sperber - 2011 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2):57.
Précis of Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning.Mike Oaksford & Nick Chater - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (1):69-84.
Presuppositions of Quantified Sentences: Experimental Data. [REVIEW]Emmanuel Chemla - 2009 - Natural Language Semantics 17 (4):299-340.
View all 29 citations / Add more citations
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