scholarly journals Indirect illusory inferences from disjunction: a new bridge between deductive inference and representativeness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Sablé-Meyer ◽  
Salvador Mascarenhas
Keyword(s):  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Structural Similarity ◽  
Conjunction Fallacy ◽  
Behavioral Experiments ◽  
Bayesian Confirmation Theory ◽  
Matching Procedure ◽  
Structural Connection ◽  
Illusory Inferences ◽  
Fallacious Reasoning

We provide a new link between deductive and probabilistic reasoning fallacies. Illusory inferences from disjunction are a broad class of deductive fallacies traditionally explained by recourse to a matching procedure that looks for content overlap between premises. In two behavioral experiments, we show that this phenomenon is instead sensitive to real-world causal dependencies and not to exact content overlap. A group of participants rated the strength of the causal dependence between pairs of sentences. This measure is a near perfect predictor of fallacious reasoning by an independent group of participants in illusory inference tasks with the same materials. In light of these results, we argue that all extant accounts of these deductive fallacies require non-trivial adjustments. Crucially, these novel indirect illusory inferences from disjunction bear a structural similarity to seemingly unrelated probabilistic reasoning problems, in particular the conjunction fallacy from the heuristics and biases literature. This structural connection was entirely obscure in previous work on these deductive problems, due to the theoretical and empirical focus on content overlap. We argue that this structural parallelism provides arguments against the need for rich descriptions and individuating information in the conjunction fallacy, and we outline a unified theory of deductive illusory inferences from disjunction and the conjunction fallacy, in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory.

Chapter 34. Stochastic Boolean Satisfiability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Majercik
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Computational Complexity ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Boolean Satisfiability ◽  
Probabilistic Planning ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Planning Problems

Stochastic satisfiability (SSAT) is an extension of satisfiability (SAT) that merges two important areas of artificial intelligence: logic and probabilistic reasoning. Initially suggested by Papadimitriou, who called it a “game against nature”, SSAT is interesting both from a theoretical perspective–it is complete for PSPACE, an important complexity class–and from a practical perspective–a broad class of probabilistic planning problems can be encoded and solved as SSAT instances. This chapter describes SSAT and its variants, their computational complexity, applications of SSAT, analytical results, algorithms and empirical results, related work, and directions for future work.

Multidimensional Probabilistic Reasoning With Novel and Socially Based Stimuli: The Disappearing Conjunction Fallacy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Barch ◽  
Richard A. Chechile ◽  
Jennifer Schultz ◽  
Brianna A. Smith ◽  
Samuel A. Sommers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Conjunction Fallacy

scholarly journals The differential effects of good luck belief on cognitive performance in boys and girls

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-119
Author(s):  
Lenka Kostovičová
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Conjunction Fallacy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Good Luck ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Motor Dexterity ◽  
Cognitive Problems

There is evidence that inducing a luck-related superstition leads to better performance on a variety of motor dexterity and cognitive tasks. However, some replication efforts have failed to succeed. At the same time, our previous findings suggest that the effect of good luck belief on cognitive performance interacts with gender. The present research aimed at replicating the study with a sample of adolescents among whom the superstitious beliefs are particularly prevalent. The participants (N = 99) were allocated to either a control or experimental group, and were asked to solve eight problems focused on cognitive reflection, conjunction fallacy, denominator neglect, and probabilistic reasoning. The experimental manipulation negatively affected boys' performance. Yet, it facilitated performance in girls via increase in their self-efficacy, measured as subjective estimate of future success in the tasks. Thus, gender seems to moderate the effect of luck-related belief on solutions to cognitive problems, which are an important part of our day-to-day decisions. Given initial gender gap in the present tasks, the crucial question to be addressed in future research is possibility of gender being a proxy for prior competence. It would imply that good luck beliefs might help low scorers, for instance in becoming less anxious and more confident, but could be harmful for high scorers.

scholarly journals What can the conjunction fallacy tell us about human reasoning?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katya Tentori
Keyword(s):  
Posterior Probability ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Conjunction Fallacy ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Open Issue ◽  
Reasoning Errors

In this chapter, I will briefly summarize and discuss the main results obtained from more than three decades of studies on the conjunction fallacy (hereafter CF) and will argue that this striking and widely debated reasoning error is a robust phenomenon that can systematically affect laypeople’s as much as experts’ probabilistic inferences, with potentially relevant real-life consequences. I will then introduce what is, in my view, the best explanation for the CF and indicate how it allows the reconciliation of some classic probabilistic reasoning errors with the outstanding reasoning performances that humans have been shown capable of. Finally, I will tackle the open issue of the greater accuracy and reliability of evidential impact assessments over those of posterior probability and outline how further research on this topic might also contribute to the development of effective human-like computing.

scholarly journals On the interplay between interpretation and reasoning in compelling fallacies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léo Picat ◽  
Salvador Mascarenhas
Keyword(s):  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Task Design ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Psychology Of Reasoning ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Illusory Inferences

We investigate the articulation between domain-general reasoning and interpretive processes in failures of deductive reasoning. We focus on illusory inferences from disjunction-like elements, a broad class of deductive fallacies studied in some detail over the past 15 years. These fallacies have received accounts grounded in reasoning processes, holding that human reasoning diverges from normative standards. A subset of these fallacies however can be analyzed differently: human reasoning is not to blame, instead the premises were interpreted in a non-obvious, yet perfectly predictable and reasonable way. Once we consider these interpretations, the apparent fallacious conclusion is no mistake at all. We give a two-factor account of these fallacies that incorporates both reasoning-based elements and interpretive elements, showing that they are not in real competition. We present novel experimental evidence in favor of our theory. Cognitive load such as induced by a dual-task design is known to hinder the interpretive mechanisms at the core of interpretation-based accounts of the fallacies of interest. In the first experiment of its kind using this paradigm with an inferential task instead of a simpler truth-value-judgment task, we found that the manipulation affected more strongly those illusions where our theory predicts that interpretive processes are at play. We conclude that the best way forward for the field to investigate the elusive line between reasoning and interpretation requires combining theories and methodologies from linguistic semantics and the psychology of reasoning.

scholarly journals Numerical tests of magnetoreception models assisted with behavioral experiments on American cockroaches

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Sheng Lee ◽  
Rainer Dumke ◽  
Tomasz Paterek
Keyword(s):  
Periplaneta Americana ◽  
Radical Pair ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Threshold Value ◽  
Chemical Yield ◽  
Behavioral Experiments ◽  
Pair Model ◽  
Behavioural Experiments ◽  
Insect Activity ◽  
Increased Activity

AbstractMany animals display sensitivity to external magnetic field, but it is only in the simplest organisms that the sensing mechanism is understood. Here we report on behavioural experiments where American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) were subjected to periodically rotated external magnetic fields with a period of 10 min. The insects show increased activity when placed in a periodically rotated Earth-strength field, whereas this effect is diminished in a twelve times stronger periodically rotated field. We analyse established models of magnetoreception, the magnetite model and the radical pair model, in light of this adaptation result. A broad class of magnetite models, based on single-domain particles found in insects and assumption that better alignment of magnetic grains towards the external field yields better sensing and higher insect activity, is shown to be excluded by the measured data. The radical-pair model explains the data if we assume that contrast in the chemical yield on the order of one in a thousand is perceivable by the animal, and that there also exists a threshold value for detection, attained in an Earth-strength field but not in the stronger field.

scholarly journals What Can the Conjunction Fallacy Tell Us about Human Reasoning?

2021 ◽  
pp. 449-464
Author(s):  
Katya Tentori
Keyword(s):  
Posterior Probability ◽  
Conjunction Fallacy ◽  
Evidential Reasoning ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Confirmation Theory ◽  
Bayesian Confirmation Theory ◽  
Probability Judgments ◽  
Bayesian Confirmation ◽  
Open Issue

This chapter briefly summarizes some the main results obtained from more than three decades of studies on the conjunction fallacy. It shows that this striking and widely discussed reasoning error is a robust phenomenon that can systematically affect the probabilistic inferences of both laypeople and experts, and it introduces an explanation based on the notion of evidential impact in terms of contemporary Bayesian confirmation theory. Finally, the chapter tackles the open issue of the greater accuracy and reliability of impact assessments over posterior probability judgments and outlines how further research on the role of evidential reasoning in the acceptability of explanations might contribute to the development of effective human-like computing.

scholarly journals Probability and Nonclassical Logic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Robert G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Probability ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
Order Relation ◽  
Confirmation Theory ◽  
Bayesian Confirmation Theory ◽  
Bayesian Confirmation ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Support Relations ◽  
Comparative Relations ◽  
Popper Functions

This chapter presents axioms for comparative conditional probability relations. The axioms presented here are more general than usual. Each comparative relation is a weak partial order on pairs of sentences but need not be a complete order relation. The axioms for these comparative relations are probabilistically sound for the broad class of conditional probability functions known as Popper functions. Furthermore, these axioms are probabilistically complete. Arguably, the notion of comparative conditional probability provides a foundation for Bayesian confirmation theory. Bayesian confirmation functions are overly precise probabilistic representations of the more fundamental logic of comparative support. The most important features of evidential support are captured by comparative relationships among argument strengths, realized by the comparative support relations and their logic.

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