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  1. A model theory of modal reasoning.Victoria A. Bell & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 1998 - Cognitive Science 22 (1):25-51.
    This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...)
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  • Pragmatic reasoning schemas.Patricia W. Cheng & Keith J. Holyoak - 1985 - Cognitive Psychology 17 (4):391-416.
    We propose that people typically reason about realistic situations using neither content-free syntactic inference rules nor representations of specific experiences. Rather, people reason using knowledge structures that we term pragmatic reasoning schemas, which are generalized sets of rules defined in relation to classes of goals. Three experiments examined the impact of a “permission schema” on deductive reasoning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that by evoking the permission schema it is possible to facilitate performance in Wason's selection paradigm for subjects who have had (...)
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  • Choice Points for a Modal Theory of Disjunction.Fabrizio Cariani - 2017 - Topoi 36 (1):171-181.
    This paper investigates the prospects for a semantic theory that treats disjunction as a modal operator. Potential motivation for such a theory comes from the way in which modals embed within disjunctions. After reviewing some of the relevant data, I go on to distinguish a variety of modal theories of disjunction. I analyze these theories by considering pairs of conflicting desiderata, highlighting some of the tradeoffs they must face.
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  • The meaning of modality.P. N. Johnson-Laird - 1978 - Cognitive Science 2 (1):17-26.
    This paper describes a semantics for modal terms such as can and may that is intended to model the mental representation of their meaning. The basic assumption of the theory is that the evaluation of a modal assertion involves an attempted mental construction of a specified alternative to a given situation rather than the separate evaluation of each member of a set of possible alternatives as would be required by a “possible worlds” semantics. The theory leads to the conclusion that, (...)
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  • Naive causality: a mental model theory of causal meaning and reasoning.Eugenia Goldvarg & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2001 - Cognitive Science 25 (4):565-610.
    This paper outlines a theory and computer implementation of causal meanings and reasoning. The meanings depend on possibilities, and there are four weak causal relations: A causes B, A prevents B, A allows B, and A allows not‐B, and two stronger relations of cause and prevention. Thus, A causes B corresponds to three possibilities: A and B, not‐A and B, and not‐A and not‐B, with the temporal constraint that B does not precede A; and the stronger relation conveys only the (...)
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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 authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a (...)
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  • Logic, Models, and Paradoxical Inferences.Isabel Orenes & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2012 - Mind and Language 27 (4):357-377.
    People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...)
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  • The processes of inference.Sangeet Khemlani & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2013 - Argument and Computation 4 (1):4 - 20.
    (2013). The processes of inference. Argument & Computation: Vol. 4, Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology, pp. 4-20. doi: 10.1080/19462166.2012.674060.
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  • Questions and challenges for the new psychology of reasoning.Jonathan St B. T. Evans - 2012 - Thinking and Reasoning 18 (1):5 - 31.
    In common with a number of other authors I believe that there has been a paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning, specifically the area traditionally labelled as the study of deduction. The deduction paradigm was founded in a philosophical tradition that assumed logicality as the basis for rational thought, and provided binary propositional logic as the agreed normative framework. By contrast, many contemporary authors assume that people have degrees of uncertainty in both premises and conclusions, and reject binary logic (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic.Saul Kripke - 1963 - Acta Philosophica Fennica 16:83-94.
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  • What 'must' and 'can' must and can mean.Angelika Kratzer - 1977 - Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (3):337--355.
    In this paper I offer an account of the meaning of must and can within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper consists of two parts: the first argues for a relative concept of modality underlying modal words like must and can in natural language. I give preliminary definitions of the meaning of these words which are formulated in terms of logical consequence and compatibility, respectively. The second part discusses one kind of insufficiency in the meaning definitions given in (...)
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  • Begriffsschrift, a Formula Language, Modeled upon that of Arithmetic, for Pure Thought [1879].Gottlob Frege - 1879 - From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic 1931:1--82.
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  • The psychological representation of modality.Jonathan Phillips & Joshua Knobe - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (1):65-94.
    A series of recent studies have explored the impact of people's judgments regarding physical law, morality, and probability. Surprisingly, such studies indicate that these three apparently unrelated types of judgments often have precisely the same impact. We argue that these findings provide evidence for a more general hypothesis about the kind of cognition people use to think about possibilities. Specifically, we suggest that this aspect of people's cognition is best understood using an idea developed within work in the formal semantics (...)
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  • A Priori True and False Conditionals.Ana Cristina Quelhas, Célia Rasga & Philip N. Johnson-Laird - 2017 - Cognitive Science 41 (S5):1003-1030.
    The theory of mental models postulates that meaning and knowledge can modulate the interpretation of conditionals. The theory's computer implementation implied that certain conditionals should be true or false without the need for evidence. Three experiments corroborated this prediction. In Experiment 1, nearly 500 participants evaluated 24 conditionals as true or false, and they justified their judgments by completing sentences of the form, It is impossible that A and ___ appropriately. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated 16 conditionals and provided their (...)
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  • Illusions in Reasoning.Sangeet S. Khemlani & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2017 - Minds and Machines 27 (1):11-35.
    Some philosophers argue that the principles of human reasoning are impeccable, and that mistakes are no more than momentary lapses in “information processing”. This article makes a case to the contrary. It shows that human reasoners commit systematic fallacies. The theory of mental models predicts these errors. It postulates that individuals construct mental models of the possibilities to which the premises of an inference refer. But, their models usually represent what is true in a possibility, not what is false. This (...)
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  • Normality: Part Descriptive, part prescriptive.Adam Bear & Joshua Knobe - 2017 - Cognition 167 (C):25-37.
    People’s beliefs about normality play an important role in many aspects of cognition and life (e.g., causal cognition, linguistic semantics, cooperative behavior). But how do people determine what sorts of things are normal in the first place? Past research has studied both people’s representations of statistical norms (e.g., the average) and their representations of prescriptive norms (e.g., the ideal). Four studies suggest that people’s notion of normality incorporates both of these types of norms. In particular, people’s representations of what is (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce.Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss - 1933 - International Journal of Ethics 43 (2):220-226.
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  • The Logic of Conditional Obligation.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1972 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (3/4):417.
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  • Conditional reasoning by mental models: chronometric and developmental evidence.Pierre Barrouillet, Nelly Grosset & Jean-François Lecas - 2000 - Cognition 75 (3):237-266.
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  • Modals as distributive indefinites.Hotze Rullmann, Lisa Matthewson & Henry Davis - 2008 - Natural Language Semantics 16 (4):317-357.
    Modals in St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish) show two differences from their counterparts in English. First, they have variable quantificational force, systematically allowing both possibility and necessity interpretations; and second, they lexically restrict the conversational background, distinguishing for example between deontic and (several kinds of) epistemic modality. We provide an analysis of the St’át’imcets modals according to which they are akin to specific indefinites in the nominal domain. They introduce choice function variables which select a subset of the accessible worlds. Following Klinedinst, (...)
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  • Free Choice Disjunction and Epistemic Possibility.Thomas Ede Zimmermann - 2000 - Natural Language Semantics 8 (4):255-290.
    This paper offers an explanation of the fact that sentences of the form (1) ‘X may A or B’ may be construed as implying (2) ‘X may A and X may B’, especially if they are used to grant permission. It is suggested that the effect arises because disjunctions are conjunctive lists of epistemic possibilities. Consequently, if the modal may is itself epistemic, (1) comes out as equivalent to (2), due to general laws of epistemic logic. On the other hand, (...)
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  • The logic of conditional obligation.Bas C. Fraassen - 1972 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (3/4):417 - 438.
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  • Illusory inferences: a novel class of erroneous deductions.P. N. Johnson-Laird & Fabien Savary - 1999 - Cognition 71 (3):191-229.
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  • Ordering semantics and premise semantics for counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1981 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 10 (2):217-234.
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  • Facts and Possibilities: A Model‐Based Theory of Sentential Reasoning.Sangeet S. Khemlani, Ruth M. J. Byrne & Philip N. Johnson-Laird - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (6):1887-1924.
    This article presents a fundamental advance in the theory of mental models as an explanation of reasoning about facts, possibilities, and probabilities. It postulates that the meanings of compound assertions, such as conditionals (if) and disjunctions (or), unlike those in logic, refer to conjunctions of epistemic possibilities that hold in default of information to the contrary. Various factors such as general knowledge can modulate these interpretations. New information can always override sentential inferences; that is, reasoning in daily life is defeasible (...)
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  • Verbs, Time, and Modality.M. J. Steedman - 1977 - Cognitive Science 1 (2):216-234.
    In the first part of this paper it is argued that Vendler's classification of verbs into aspectual categories, called activities, accomplishments, achievements, and states, is better seen as classifying the meanings of sentences, and a recursive scheme for describing the aspectual character of sentences is presented.In the second part, this scheme is applied to the discussion of the epistemic and deontic meanings of the modal verbs must, will, and may. In particular, the relation between the “future” and “nonfuture” senses of (...)
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  • Must . . . stay . . . strong!Kai von Fintel & Anthony S. Gillies - 2010 - Natural Language Semantics 18 (4):351-383.
    It is a recurring mantra that epistemic must creates a statement that is weaker than the corresponding flat-footed assertion: It must be raining vs. It’s raining. Contrary to classic discussions of the phenomenon such as by Karttunen, Kratzer, and Veltman, we argue that instead of having a weak semantics, must presupposes the presence of an indirect inference or deduction rather than of a direct observation. This is independent of the strength of the claim being made. Epistemic must is therefore quite (...)
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  • Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition.Jonathan Evans - 2008 - Annual Review of Psychology 59:255–78.
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  • Entertaining alternatives: Disjunctions as modals.Bart Geurts - 2005 - Natural Language Semantics 13 (4):383-410.
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  • Naive Probability: Model‐Based Estimates of Unique Events.Sangeet S. Khemlani, Max Lotstein & Philip N. Johnson-Laird - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (6):1216-1258.
    We describe a dual-process theory of how individuals estimate the probabilities of unique events, such as Hillary Clinton becoming U.S. President. It postulates that uncertainty is a guide to improbability. In its computer implementation, an intuitive system 1 simulates evidence in mental models and forms analog non-numerical representations of the magnitude of degrees of belief. This system has minimal computational power and combines evidence using a small repertoire of primitive operations. It resolves the uncertainty of divergent evidence for single events, (...)
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  • The Truth of Conditional Assertions.Geoffrey P. Goodwin & P. N. Johnson-Laird - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (8):2502-2533.
    Given a basic conditional of the form, If A then C, individuals usually list three cases as possible: A and C, not‐A and not‐C, not‐A and C. This result corroborates the theory of mental models. By contrast, individuals often judge that the conditional is true only in the case of A and C, and that cases of not‐A are irrelevant to its truth or falsity. This result corroborates other theories of conditionals. To resolve the discrepancy, we devised two new tasks: (...)
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  • New paradigm psychology of reasoning.David E. Over - 2009 - Thinking and Reasoning 15 (4):431-438.
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  • Naive probability: A mental model theory of extensional reasoning.Philip Johnson-Laird, Paolo Legrenzi, Vittorio Girotto, Maria Sonino Legrenzi & Jean-Paul Caverni - 1999 - Psychological Review 106 (1):62-88.
    This article outlines a theory of naive probability. According to the theory, individuals who are unfamiliar with the probability calculus can infer the probabilities of events in an extensional way: They construct mental models of what is true in the various possibilities. Each model represents an equiprobable alternative unless individuals have beliefs to the contrary, in which case some models will have higher probabilities than others. The probability of an event depends on the proportion of models in which it occurs. (...)
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  • Reasoning From Inconsistency to Consistency.P. N. Johnson-Laird, Vittorio Girotto & Paolo Legrenzi - 2004 - Psychological Review 111 (3):640-661.
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