New Paradigm Psychology of Conditional Reasoning and Its Philosophical Sources

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
David Over
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Conditional Probability ◽  
Conditional Reasoning ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Ramsey Test ◽  
Psychology Of Reasoning ◽  
Psychological Experiments

There is a new Bayesian, or probabilistic, paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, with new psychological accounts of the indicative conditional of natural language and of conditional reasoning. Dorothy Edgington has had a major impact on this new paradigm, through her views on inference from uncertain premises, the relation between the probability of the indicative conditional, P(if p then q), and the conditional probability, P(q|p), and the use of the Ramsey test to evaluate conditionals. Accounts are given in this chapter of the psychological experiments in the new paradigm that confirm empirical hypotheses inspired by her work and other philosophical sources.

Mood and modality: out of theory and into the fray

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARJORIE MCSHANE ◽  
SERGEI NIRENBURG ◽  
RON ZACHARSKI
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Language L ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Value Sets

The topic of mood and modality (MOD) is a difficult aspect of language description because, among other reasons, the inventory of modal meanings is not stable across languages, moods do not map neatly from one language to another, modality may be realised morphologically or by free-standing words, and modality interacts in complex ways with other modules of the grammar, like tense and aspect. Describing MOD is especially difficult if one attempts to develop a unified approach that not only provides cross-linguistic coverage, but is also useful in practical natural language processing systems. This article discusses an approach to MOD that was developed for and implemented in the Boas Knowledge-Elicitation (KE) system. Boas elicits knowledge about any language, L, from an informant who need not be a trained linguist. That knowledge then serves as the static resources for an L-to-English translation system. The KE methodology used throughout Boas is driven by a resident inventory of parameters, value sets, and means of their realisation for a wide range of language phenomena. MOD is one of those parameters, whose values are the inventory of attested and not yet attested moods (e.g. indicative, conditional, imperative), and whose realisations include flective morphology, agglutinating morphology, isolating morphology, words, phrases and constructions. Developing the MOD elicitation procedures for Boas amounted to wedding the extensive theoretical and descriptive research on MOD with practical approaches to guiding an untrained informant through this non-trivial task. We believe that our experience in building the MOD module of Boas offers insights not only into cross-linguistic aspects of MOD that have not previously been detailed in the natural language processing literature, but also into KE methodologies that could be applied more broadly.

Dynamic inference and everyday conditional reasoning in the new paradigm

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 346-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Oaksford ◽  
Nick Chater
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Reasoning ◽  
New Paradigm

Towards a descriptivist psychology of reasoning and decision making

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 275-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans ◽  
Shira Elqayam
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Psychology Of Reasoning ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Normative Evaluation

AbstractOur target article identifiednormativismas the view that rationality should be evaluated against unconditional normative standards. We believe this to be entrenched in the psychological study of reasoning and decision making and argued that it is damaging to this empirical area of study, calling instead for a descriptivist psychology of reasoning and decision making. The views of 29 commentators (from philosophy and cognitive science as well as psychology) were mixed, including some staunch defences of normativism, but also a number that were broadly supportive of our position, although critical of various details. In particular, many defended a position that we call “soft normativism,” which sees a role for normative evaluation within boundaries alongside more descriptive research goals. In this response, we clarify our use of the term “instrumental rationality” and add discussion of “epistemic rationality,” defining both as descriptive and non-normative concepts. We consider the debate with reference to dual-process theory, the “new paradigm” psychology of reasoning, and empirical research strategy in these fields. We also discuss cognitive variation by age, intelligence, and culture, and the issue of relative versus absolute definitions of norms. In conclusion, we hope at least to have raised consciousness about the important boundaries between norm and description in the psychology of thinking.

RAMSEY’S TEST, ADAMS’ THESIS, AND LEFT-NESTED CONDITIONALS

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD DIETZ ◽  
IGOR DOUVEN
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Probability ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Ramsey’S Test

Adams famously suggested that the acceptability of any indicative conditional whose antecedent and consequent are both factive sentences amounts to the subjective conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. The received view has it that this thesis offers an adequate partial explication of Ramsey’s test, which characterizes graded acceptability for conditionals in terms of hypothetical updates on the antecedent. Some results in van Fraassen (1976) may raise hope that this explicatory approach to Ramsey’s test is extendible to left-nested conditionals, that is, conditionals whose antecedent is itself conditional in form. We argue that this interpretation of van Fraassen’s results is to be rejected. Specifically, we provide an argument from material inadequacy against a generalization of Adams’ thesis for left-nested conditionals.

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