Reasoning

Abstract

Reasoning concerns the cognitive processes by which people draw conclusions from the salient, meaningful pieces of information that they comprehend or observe. Reasoning processes are challenging to investigate because both their initiation and their final product (the inference) can be nonverbal and unconscious. This chapter summarizes recent developments in the science of reasoning. It briefly reviews the differences between “core” patterns of inference, that is, deduction, induction, and abduction: Deductions are inferences that are true in those cases in which the premises are true. Inductions concern all other sorts of reasoning. And abductions are special types of inductions that yield explanatory hypotheses. The chapter then addresses three fundamental debates that engage contemporary reasoning researchers. The first addresses how to separate rational from irrational deductions. The second concerns the relation between deduction and induction. And the third focuses on how people create explanations. The chapter concludes by addressing ways of making progress to a general, unified account of higher‐level reasoning.

Facts and Possibilities: A Model‐Based Theory of Sentential Reasoning

“…In logic, the meaning of sentential connectives is “truth functional”, that is, the semantics of each connective yields a truth value of the compound in which it occurs as a function only of the truth or falsity of the clauses it connects. For readers unfamiliar with this idea, Khemlani (, table 11.2) presents the truth‐functional treatment of various compounds. But this treatment of conditionals yields bizarre inferences in daily life.…”

Effect of personality on compound reasoning

“…Thus, given any proposition, the MMT postulates that individuals use the meaning to represent it mentally. This meaning is a product of their knowledge of the world, and of the contextual factors that intervene in the moment (Johnson-Laird, 1983, 2006Johnson-Laird et al, 2015, 2018. The representation is produced using mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983;2006;Johnson-Laird et al, 2015, 2018, the scale of which will be linked to the scope of the subject's interpretation of the proposition (Khemlani et al, 2012).…”

“…In this way, the number of mental models takes on a crucial role. According to the model, as the number of possibilities that subjects must represent increases, so does the overload in their working memory (Khemlani, 2018;Khemlani et al, 2012Khemlani et al, , 2014Khemlani et al, , 2017Khemlani et al, , 2018). Consequently, the task becomes more difficult, while both time to resolution and tendency to error increase (Khemlani, 2018;Khemlani et al, 2012Khemlani et al, , 2014Khemlani et al, , 2017Khemlani et al, , 2018.…”

“…While logicist theories emphasize the formal and syntactic aspects of thought, the MMT focuses on the semantic and contextual components (Khemlani, 2018;Macbeth, Razumiejczyk, Crivello, Fioramonti, & Pereyra-Girardi, 2013). The general hypothesis is that people reason by developing mental models of the world (Khemlani, Byrne, & Johnson-Laird, 2018;Johnson-Laird & Ragni, 2019).…”

“…Thus, the greater the number of models required, the greater the difficulty (Johnson-Laird, 1983). Additionally, it postulates that people naturally tend to avoid overloading their working memory (Johnson-Laird, 1983, 2006, 2010aKhemlani, 2018). Based on these assumptions, the MMT predicts some behaviors that take place when people reason.…”