Mental Models

Abstract

People construct small‐scale models of reality to understand the world and descriptions of it. Their iconic mental representations capture structural aspects of the elements simulated. They think about alternative possibilities that are consistent with assertions that contain logical connectives such as “if” and “or,” quantifiers such as “all” or “some,” and relational terms such as “in front of” or “before.” They reason and make decisions by combining mental models, and they search for counterexamples to their conclusions. People construct mental models when they make deductive inferences and when they make inferences about probability and risk, as well as when they form concepts, solve problems, make moral judgments, or create alternatives to reality in their counterfactual thoughts.

A Strongly Differing Opinion on Proof-Theoretic Semantics?

“…On his next page Prawitz discusses Alfred Tarski's proposal for defining logical consequence, from his paper of 1936 [17]. So it seems likely that Prawitz reached the view stated in (2) by assuming that Tarski's 1936 paper is of interest to model theorists. This is not in fact the case.…”

“…One is mental model theory as pursued by the cognitive scientist Ruth Byrne [2], and another is the model-theoretic syntax advocated by the linguists Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz [12].…”

Institutions and cognition

“…Nevertheless, this does not mean that these levels do not affect market shaping. On the contrary, they have fundamental impacts on the emergence of markets, as they significantly affect the overall institutional matrix 134 . Similarly, at the socio-cultural level we witness a shortage of market structures 135 .…”