scholarly journals There Can be a Syntax of Thought Related to Logical Forms

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 270-278
Author(s):  
Miguel López-Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Axiomatic System ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Basic Framework ◽  
The Way ◽  
Mental Models Theory

Abstract Nowadays, a very important theory, the mental models theory, is demonstrating that it is able to explain most of the results in reasoning experiments reported by the cognitive science literature. However, this has a consequence. The mental models theory is mainly focused on content and meaning, and its theses can lead to reject the idea that syntax plays a role in the human mind and that reasoning is logical. But, in this paper, I try to show that it is possible to accept the basic framework of the mental models theory and, at the same time, to continue to claim that there are syntactic and formal logical processes coherent with the way our mind works. To do that, I argue that, even accepting that the mental models theory describes correctly the processes why certain combinations of possibilities are detected, it can be stated that the relationships between such combinations indicated by the theory are consistent with, for example, the modal axiomatic system K.

scholarly journals Perception of learning in programming lectures based on mental models

2020 ◽  
pp. 41375-41377
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
Technical Education ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Way

The understanding of the human mind and its ability to learn are objects of research in Cognitive Science. The way a person learns is unique, the result of her previous experiences and the development of her mental model. The understanding of how the students produce their mental models can favor the learning of several disciplines, as evidenced in several papers. In this context, this work investigates the combination of mental models used by students within the lecture of Programming in technical education classes. The analysis was based on a test that identifies strengths and weaknesses in the structuring of mental models.

scholarly journals Pseudo-conditionals and causal assertibles in Stoic logic

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 417
Author(s):  
Miguel López-Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Conditional Perfection ◽  
Stoic Logic ◽  
Mental Models Theory

http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n3p417The Stoics not only analyzed sentences showing to be clear conditionals. They also reviewed other kinds of sentences related to the conditional that are not exactly conditionals, for example, the pseudo-conditionals and the causal assertibles. In this paper, I try to argue that the Stoic account of such sentences reveals that certain problematic issues that contemporary cognitive science is concerned with, such as the ways the conditionals can be expressed or the pragmatic phenomenon of the conditional perfection, were already studied by the Stoics, and that they even gave their solutions to those problems. To do that, I resort to the semantic analysis of models usually made by the mental models theory, and use it as a methodological tool.

scholarly journals The Problems of the Mental Logic with the Double Negation: The Necessity of a Semantic Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-153
Author(s):  
Miguel López-Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Syntactic Theories ◽  
Mental Logic ◽  
Mental Models Theory

Abstract The double negation has always been considered by the logical systems from ancient times to the present. In fact, that is an issue that the current syntactic theories studying human reasoning, for example, the mental logic theory, address today. However, in this paper, I claim that, in the case of some languages such as Spanish, the double negation causes problems for the cognitive theories mainly based on formal schemata and supporting the idea of a universal syntax of thought in the human mind. Thus, I propose that, given those problems, semantic frameworks such as that of the mental models theory seem to be more appropriate for explaining the human inferential activity.

REID ON SINGLE AND DOUBLE VISION: MECHANICS AND MORALS

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES VAN CLEVE
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Double Vision ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

When we look at a tree, two images of it are formed, one on each of our retinas. Why, then, asks the child or the philosopher, do we not see two trees? 1 Thomas Reid offers an answer to this question in the section of his Inquiry into the Human Mind entitled ‘Of seeing objects single with two eyes’. The principles he invokes in his answer serve at the same time to explain why we do occasionally see objects double. In Part I of this essay, I examine the principles Reid uses to explain single and double vision. This part is mostly an exercise in the history of cognitive science, but it raises questions of interest to philosophers along the way. In Part II, I turn to a hard-core philosophical problem raised by double vision, namely, whether double vision constitutes an objection to the direct realist theory of perception, which was one of Reid's main philosophical purposes to promote.

scholarly journals Analytic Sentences, Cognition, and Language: Some Links between Current Theories

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Miguel López-Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Probability Logic ◽  
Mental Logic ◽  
The Way ◽  
Mental Models Theory

This paper tries to explore possible relations and differences between three kinds of contemporary theories about cognition and language: the approaches supporting the idea that there is a mental logic, the mental models theory, and the frameworks based upon probability logic. That exploration is made here by means of the analytic sentences and the revision of the way each of those types of theories can deal with them. The conclusions seem to show that the three kinds of theories address such sentences in a similar manner, which can mean that there can be more links between them than thought.

Are the Aristotelian conversion rules easy for human thought?

SATS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel López-Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Logical System ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Conversion Rules ◽  
Mental Models Theory

AbstractDrawing on the theory of ‘mental models’, I have previously shown that the valid syllogisms in the Aristotelian logical system, including all of its figures and moods, are very easy for the human mind. Indeed, they can even be used to predict inferences that people can make with quantified sentences. In this paper, I further argue that, if mental models theory is correct, then also the Aristotelian conversion rules are not hard for the human mind. My account here again focuses on the distinction made by the mental models theory between canonical and noncanonical models.

Mental models theory and relevance theory in quantificational reasoning

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Nicolle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Procedural Information ◽  
Reasoning Tasks ◽  
The Way ◽  
Mental Models Theory

Human reasoning involving quantified statements is one area in which findings from cognitive psychology and linguistic pragmatics complement each other. I will show how mental models theory provides a promising account of the mechanisms underlying peoples’ performance in three types of reasoning tasks involving quantified premises and conclusions. I will further suggest that relevance theory can help to explain the way in which mental models are employed in the reasoning processes. Conversely, mental models theory suggests that human reasoning typically does not involve deductive rules, which in turn entails a modification to the nature of the deductive processes proposed by relevance theory. The mechanism proposed by mental models theory also helps to clarify the nature of the relevance theory distinction between conceptual and procedural information.

scholarly journals Some arguments that the mental logic theory needs to clarify to continue being an alternative to the mental models theory

Civilizar ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (31) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel López Astorga
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Mental Logic ◽  
Formal Rules ◽  
Mental Models Theory

Undoubtedly, the mental models theory has become an important theory in cognitive science. This theory can predict and explain most of the experimental results that the literature of that field shows. This fact can lead one to think that human mental processes are essentially semantic and that the syntactic approaches can no longer be held. In this way, in this paper, I try to analyze a framework based on formal rules, the mental logic theory, which also seems consistent with the experimental results, and review some of the reasons that its proponents often give in order to prove that it is worth continuing to consider it as an explicative alternative to the mental models theory. However, I show that such reasons can be questioned from the mental models theory and that, therefore, they need to be explained in a clearer way.

Deontic Reasoning, Mental Models Theory and Traffic Signs Information

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Vargas ◽  
Sergio Moreno-Rios ◽  
Candida Castro ◽  
Geoffrey Underwood
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Traffic Signs ◽  
Deontic Reasoning ◽  
Mental Models Theory

Minds, Machines, and Giving a Damn

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Chodat
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Walker Percy ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Partial Success ◽  
The Way

The 1960s saw the triumph of cognitive science over behaviorism. This chapter examines three literary–philosophical objections to this shift: “West Coast” phenomenology, Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2, and the writings of Walker Percy, the first of the postwar sages featured in this book. For “West Coast” philosophers, cognitive science ignores the way human action is structured by what we “give a damn” about—a sense of significance that orients our actions. Powers’s novel goes a step further: no more than machines do we know what to give a damn about. Percy’s essays and fiction challenge both these positions, asking us to see analogies between the significance we find in language and the significance we find in living a Christian life. Establishing such an analogy is the goal of Percy’s 1971 Love in the Ruins, which seeks to embody—with only partial success—what terms such as “faith” and “community” might mean.

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