Possibilities as the foundation of reasoning

Johnson‐Laird, P. N.; Ragni, Marco

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.019

Cited by 58 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…What underlies possibilities and probabilities is the human ability, in almost any situation, to model a small number of exhaustive and mutually exclusive alternatives. They can each be realized in an indefinite number of different ways (Johnson-Laird & Ragni, 2019 ). Toss a dice, and it has six possible outcomes, but each of them as in a “possible worlds” semantics can occur in infinitely many ways, depending on the number of times the dice spins, its speed of its rotation, its mass, and so on and on.…”

Section: Conditionals In Logic and Probability Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, the modal auxiliary verb “may” is not ambiguous, but it can be interpreted as deontic in giving permission, epistemic in expressing a possibility or a probability based on knowledge (Lassiter, 2017 ), or alethic in asserting a relation, such as one between premises and conclusion. When a fire-chief tells the inhabitants of a building after a fire: You may go back to your apartments now , she can be both giving them permission and asserting that it is possible to do so (Johnson-Laird & Ragni, 2019 ).…”

Section: Conditionals In Logic and Probability Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The probability of conditionals: A review

2021

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A major hypothesis about conditionals is the Equation in which the probability of a conditional equals the corresponding conditional probability: p( if A then C ) = p( C|A ). Probabilistic theories often treat it as axiomatic, whereas it follows from the meanings of conditionals in the theory of mental models. In this theory, intuitive models (system 1) do not represent what is false, and so produce errors in estimates of p( if A then C ), yielding instead p( A & C ). Deliberative models (system 2) are normative, and yield the proportion of cases of A in which C holds, i.e., the Equation. Intuitive estimates of the probability of a conditional about unique events: If covid-19 disappears in the USA, then Biden will run for a second term , together with those of each of its clauses, are liable to yield joint probability distributions that sum to over 100%. The error, which is inconsistent with the probability calculus, is massive when participants estimate the joint probabilities of conditionals with each of the different possibilities to which they refer. This result and others under review corroborate the model theory. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-021-01938-5.

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Section: Conditionals In Logic and Probability Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conditionals In Logic and Probability Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The probability of conditionals: A review

2021

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“…A relevant case in our corpus concerns modal verbs, some of which can be used in either a deontic or an epistemic way. Although both types of modals can have a subjective/interpersonal function (Lyons, 1977), they differ in the meaning they encodedeontic modals express obligations and permissions, while epistemic modals concerns believes (Foley & Van Valin, 1984;Johnson-Laird & Ragni, 2019;Verstraete, 2001). Our claims about modal verbs as linguistic means to express perspective would pertain to epistemic modals in particular.…”

Section: Future Studies and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of Perspective Markers and Connectives in Expressing Subjectivity: Evidence from Collocational Analyses

Wei

Evers-Vermeul

Sanders

2020

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This study explores how subjectivity is expressed in coherence relations, by means of a distinctive collocational analysis on two Chinese causal connectives: the specific subjective kejian ‘so’, used in subjective argument-claim relations, and the underspecified suoyi ‘so’, which can be used in both subjective argument-claim and objective cause-consequence relations. On the basis of both Horn’s pragmatic Relation and Quality principles and the Uniform Information Density Theory, we hypothesized that the presence of other linguistic elements expressing subjectivity in a discourse segment should be related the degree of subjectivity encoded by the connective. In line with this hypothesis, the association scores showed that suoyi is more frequently combined with perspective markers expressing epistemic stance: cognition verbs and modal verbs. Kejian, which already expresses epistemic stance, co-occurred more often with perspective markers related to attitudinal stance, such as markers of expectedness and importance. The paper also pays attention to similarities and differences in collocation patterns across contexts and genres.

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“…Despite these efforts, it was not however until the proposal of Johnson-Laird (2012, 2014) that a complete Theory of Negation was presented. To develop this theory, the authors extended the findings formulated in the Mental Models Theory -MMT (Johnson-Laird, 1983, 2006, 2010a, 2010bJohnson Laird & Byrne, 1991;Johnson-Laird, Goodwin, & Khemlani, 2018;Johnson-Laird & Ragni, 2019). The latter was born in opposition to traditional theories like the Psychology of Proof -PSICOP (Rips, 1994(Rips, , 2011 or the Mental Logic Theory (Braine & O'Brien, 1998), which consider reasoning to be a set of innate logical rules (Elqayam & Over, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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). These models are defined as iconic representations of the world (Johnson-Laird, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%