New paper in T&R about the abstract representation of conditionals

Henry Markovits, Pier-Luc de Chantal, and Janie Brisson of UQAM recently published a paper in Thinking & Reasoning about the abstract mental representation of basic conditionals. Their abstract is here: Studies examining the interpretation that is given...

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Research on mental models featured at the London Reasoning Workshop

This year’s London Reasoning Workshop featured new research on mental models and reasoning. The speakers included: Phil Johnson-Laird and Marco Ragni: “You can do that! Possibilities, permissions, and prohibitions” Monica Bucciarelli and Phil Johnson-Laird: “People should interrupt...

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New paper on why machines can’t reason yet

A major failure of current AI systems is that they can’t mimic common sense reasoning: most ML systems don’t reason, and all theorem provers draw trivial and silly deductions. We analyze why — and suggest a path...

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People love moral statements they believe; hate those they disbelieve

Monica Bucciarelli and Phil Johnson-Laird have several new articles on deontic and moral reasoning. First, they published a paper and a reply to comments in the Italian legal journal, Materiali Per Una Storia Della Cultura Giuridica. The abstract...

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Thinking is founded on models of possibilities: An interview with Johnson-Laird

Marco Ragni recently interviewed Phil Johnson-Laird for an article in KI – Künstliche Intelligenz. Here’s a small excerpt from the interview: MR: From your perspective—what are current limitations of AI approaches to explain human reasoning? PJL: When...

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Interview with Philip Johnson-Laird in The Reasoner

Hykel Hosni recently interviewed Phil Johnson-Laird in the latest issue of The Reasoner. Here’s a short excerpt: HH: How about probabilistic reasoning? PJL: The idea that probabilities enter into reasoning is quite popular at the moment: theorists want...

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The truth of conditionals

Geoff Goodwin and Phil Johnson-Laird describe new work on resolving a long-standing controversy about “conditional” assertions. You can read the paper here. Here’s the abstract: Given a basic conditional of the form, If A then C, individuals usually...

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50 years of the selection task

Marco Ragni, Ilir Kola, and Phil Johnson-Laird have just published a meta-analysis of 50 years of research into the selection task, a paradigm invented to test how reasoners select evidence to test hypotheses. Download the paper here,...

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Factual and counterfactual conditionals

A new paper by Cristina Quelhas, Célia Rasga, and Phil Johnson-Laird describes the relation between factual conditionals and counterfactual conditionals.

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People become more logical without feedback

Most theories of reasoning assume that human reasoning ability is stable over time, but few studies have investigated the matter. We analyzed a study in which 20 participants drew their own conclusions to the 64 sorts of...

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