Reasoning about possibilities: Modal logics, possible worlds, and mental models.

Autor: Johnson-Laird PN; Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.; Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA., Ragni M; Technische Universität Chemnitz, Thüringer Weg 11, 09126, Chemnitz, Germany. marco.ragni@hsw.tu-chemnitz.de.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Psychonomic bulletin & review [Psychon Bull Rev] 2024 Jul 16. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 16.
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-024-02518-z
Abstrakt: Everyone reasons about possibilities. This article explains how they could do so using mental models. The theory makes four major claims: 1. Correct inferences are necessary, referring only to facts or possibilities to which the premises refer and not ruling any of them out, for example: She left or hid; Therefore, it's possible that she left and possible that she hid. 2. A possibility such as that she hid, which is represented in an intuitive model, presupposes the possibility that it did not occur, she did not hide, which, if reasoners deliberate, is represented in the resulting model. 3. Reasoners condense consistent possibilities, such as the earlier pair, into one possibility: it is possible that she left and she hid. 4. Inconsistencies, such as she left or hid, and she neither left nor hid, refer to no possibilities whatsoever - they have an empty model - and so their only effects are local. Hence, any inference can be withdrawn with impunity if there is knowledge to the contrary. Experiments have corroborated each of these principles. They are incompatible with four essentials of standard modal logics, which concern deductions based on "possible" or "necessary". Their formal deductions correspond to valid inferences, which have no counterexamples in which the premises are true but the conclusion is false. And so the article examines the differences between the two approaches, and explores the adaptation of a modal logic to account for correct human reasoning. Its feasibility is an open question.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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