The interpretation of the ‘if P then Q’ conditional statement is a central element in most logical systems. It largely shapes how these logical systems function. It is well known that, although attempts have been made, logical systems are principally unable to encapsulate how people reason in everyday life. This is mainly due to the discrepancies between the logical abstractions of the conditional statement and its everyday interpretation. Among other things, this makes it difficult to design artificial intelligence based on the abstract rules of logic. However, the ancient logicians who first defined the traditional interpretation of the conditional erroneously took into account more propositions than were actually being denoted. They characterised the ‘if P (or R) then Q’ relationship in place of the ‘if P then Q’ relationship. In relation to this, they also committed the error of leaving the context undenoted, which led to an unnatural interpretation of logical truth and logical necessity. This mistaken interpretation is still predominant today and can also be found in several mathematical logics, such as in propositional logic, even though mathematical logics were allegedly created independently of the ancient Greco-Roman logic. Fixing these problems reveals that the correct interpretation of the conditional statement is the equivalence/biconditional. This equivalent interpretation is interpreted by logicians as one of the most common everyday fallacies. Yet looking back on how the conditional statement was actually abstracted in the antiquity, it is evident that people were right and logicians were mistaken. Although the almost 50-year-old experimental psychological literature on the conditional did not confirm this common everyday tendency towards the biconditional interpretation, these findings are merely the result of unsystematic research. Running some of the long missing experiments leads the main experimental tasks to reveal overall the basic biconditional inferences. The approach presented in this book also resolves such dilemmas as the Wason’s abstract selection task, the paradox of the conditional statement and the Raven paradox. It is also shown here that the probabilistic interpretation of the conditional statement is not in conflict with this basic equivalent/biconditional interpretation. The approach is described in this book as the simplest possible non-monotonic logic, and pragmatic inferences, context effects, counterfactuals, possible world semantics and psychologism are also discussed. Since the conditional statement is equivalent to the universal affirmative statement in syllogisms, it is plausible to observe that fixing this same error in syllogisms also makes them compatible with people's actual inferences. Even the normally ambiguous Euler circles become an excellent tool to depict how this updated logic functions. Finally, with this new approach, the root of learning processes is inherently embedded into the logical abstraction of the conditional/universal affirmative statement, and hence, into logic in general. Therefore, this simple logic, presented in a non-technical way, has the potential to bring both human reasoning and learning under the umbrella of the same abstract system. This might be beneficial both for formalising psychology and for creating artificial intelligence.

Conditional reasoning is reasoning that involves statements of the sort If A (Antecedent) then C (Consequent). This type of reasoning is ubiquitous; everyone engages in it. Indeed, the ability to do so may be considered a defining human characteristic. Without this ability, human cognition would be greatly impoverished. "What-if" thinking could not occur. There would be no retrospective efforts to understand history by imagining how it could have taken a different course. Decisions that take possible contingencies into account could not be made; there could be no attempts to influence the future by selecting actions on the basis of their expected effects. Despite the commonness and importance of conditional reasoning and the considerable attention it has received from scholars, it remains the subject of much continuing debate. Unsettled questions, both normative and empirical, continue to be asked. What constitutes normative conditional reasoning? How do people engage in it? Does what people do match what would be expected of a rational agent with the abilities and limitations of human beings? If not, how does it deviate and how might people's ability to engage in it be improved? This book reviews the work of prominent psychologists and philosophers on conditional reasoning. It describes empirical research on how people deal with conditional arguments and on how conditional statements are used and interpreted in everyday communication. It examines philosophical and theoretical treatments of the mental processes that support conditional reasoning. Its extensive coverage of the subject makes it an ideal resource for students, teachers, and researchers with a focus on cognition across disciplines.

This book reviews the work of prominent psychologists and philosophers on conditional reasoning. It provides empirical research on how people deal with conditional arguments and examines how conditional statements are used and interpreted in everyday communication. It also includes philosophical and theoretical treatments of the mental processes that support conditional reasoning, making it an ideal resource for students, teachers, and researchers with a focus in cognition across disciplines.

For almost 2,500 years, the Western concept of what is to be human has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. In this text a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward.

This book examines two questions: Do people make use of abstract rules such as logical and statistical rules when making inferences in everyday life? Can such abstract rules be changed by training? Contrary to the spirit of reductionist theories from behaviorism to connectionism, there is ample evidence that people do make use of abstract rules of inference -- including rules of logic, statistics, causal deduction, and cost-benefit analysis. Such rules, moreover, are easily alterable by instruction as it occurs in classrooms and in brief laboratory training sessions. The fact that purely formal training can alter them and that those taught in one content domain can "escape" to a quite different domain for which they are also highly applicable shows that the rules are highly abstract. The major implication for cognitive science is that people are capable of operating with abstract rules even for concrete, mundane tasks; therefore, any realistic model of human inferential capacity must reflect this fact. The major implication for education is that people can be far more broadly influenced by training than is generally supposed. At high levels of formality and abstraction, relatively brief training can alter the nature of problem-solving for an infinite number of content domains.

Providing a balance of reference to theoretical and practical information on critical thinking, this annotated bibliography of 930 selected items from 1980 through 1991 covers the fields of philosophy, psychology, and education. It is geared especially to teachers, administrators, and researchers in elementary, secondary, and higher education. Representing past and current trends in the concepts, research, and teaching of critical thinking, the eight chapters include literature references to the history of critical thinking, the Critical Thinking Movement, the wide range of views on the definition and concept of critical thinking, testing and evaluating, professional development and teacher training, research studies on learning transfer and effective teaching techniques, theory of teaching critical thinking, and instructional methods. Author and subject indexes.

In recent years the psychology of reasoning has undergone radical change, which can only be seen as a Kuhn-style scientific revolution. This shift has been dubbed ‘New Paradigm’. For years, psychologists of reasoning focused on binary truth values and regarded the influence of belief as a bias. In contrast to this, the new paradigm puts probabilities, and subjective degrees of belief, centre stage. It also emphasises subjective psychological value, or utility; the way we reason within our own social environment (‘social pragmatics’); and the crucial role of dual process theories. Such theories distinguish between fast, intuitive processes, and effortful processes which enable hypothetical thinking. The new paradigm aims to integrate the psychology of reasoning with the study of judgement and decision making, leading to a much more unified field of higher mental processing. This collection showcases these recent developments, with chapters on topics such as the difference between deduction and induction, a Bayesian formulation of faint praise, the role of emotion in reasoning, and the relevance of psychology of reasoning to moral judgement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Thinking & Reasoning.