Symmetry and asymmetry between inferences between disjunctions and conditionals

How people make inferences between disjunctions and conditionals is a current important question that can test existing main psychological accounts (mental logic, the probabilistic approach, the original and revised mental model theory) for propositional reasoning. In order to test these accounts, one experiment investigated how relations (material implication, subcontrariety, contradiction, and contrariety) between two basic components (A and C) in disjunctions (e.g., A or C; not-A or C) and conditionals (e.g., if not-A then C; if A then C) and inference directions (disjunction-to-conditional versus conditional-to-disjunction) between disjunctions and their corresponding conditionals affect human inferences between both. It was found that participants’ inferences were symmetric between the two inference directions in compatible relations and incompatible relations where two basic components were on different dimensions, but not in the other relations. Which of the two inference directions was easier depended on relations between two basic components, because some relations tended to elicit particular interpretations of premises and conclusions, or belief biases. The present overall response pattern is beyond all the existing accounts for inferences between disjunctions and conditionals. Inferences between disjunctions and conditionals are complex and so there may not be a unified account for them.

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

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.

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

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.

Some arguments that the mental logic theory needs to clarify to continue being an alternative to the 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.

Against Philo’s interpretation of conditional. The case of Aristotle´s thesis

There is an Aristotelian thesis that can be considered controversial. That is the thesis related to a denied conditional with only one propositional variable and in which, in addition, one of its clauses is also denied. While the thesis is not a tautology, people tend to accept it as true. Pfeifer’s approach can account for this fact. However, I try to show that this problem can also be explained from other alternative frameworks, in particular, from that of the mental models theory, that of López-Astorga based on the pragmatic phenomenon of conditional perfection, and that of the mental logic theory. Likewise, I indicate the difficulties regarding Aristotle’s thesis of the mental models theory and López-Astorga’s proposal, and conclude that the account of the mental logic theory is the strongest alternative to Pfeifer’s explanation and that what is clearly obvious is that conditional should not be materially interpreted.http://dx.doi.org/10.15304/ag.35.2.2542

Mental Logic and the Denials of Conjunctions and Disjunctions

ABSTRACT: The mental models theory predicts that, while conjunctions are easier than disjunctions for individuals, when denied, conjunctions are harder than disjunctions. Khemlani, Orenes, and Johnson-Laird proved that this prediction is correct in their work of 2014. In this paper, I analyze their results in order to check whether or not they really affect the mental logic theory. My conclusion is that, although Khemlani et al.'s study provides important findings, such findings do not necessarily lead to questioning or to rejecting the mental logic theory.