The conditional, if...then, is probably the most important term in natural language and forms the core of systems of logic and mental representation. It occurs in all human languages and allows people to express their knowledge of the causal or law-like structure of the world and of others' behaviour. The way in which the conditional is modelled also determines the core of most logical systems. Unsurprisingly, it is also the most-researched expression in the psychology of human reasoning. This book brings together recent developments in the cognitive science and psychology of conditional reasoning. Over the last ten to fifteen years, research on conditionals has come to dominate the psychology of reasoning, providing a rich seam of results that have created new theoretical possibilities. This book shows how these developments have led researchers to view people's conditional reasoning behaviour more as successful probabilistic reasoning rather than as errorful logical reasoning. It shows how the multifarious, and apparently competing, theoretical positions developed over the last fifty years in this area - mental logics, mental models, heuristic approaches, dual process theory, and probabilistic approaches - have responded to these insights. Its organisation reflects the view that an integrative approach is emerging that may need to exploit aspects of all these theoretical positions to explain the rich and complex phenomenon of reasoning with conditionals. It includes an introductory chapter relating the development of the psychology of reasoning to developments in the logic and semantics of the conditional.
Weiterführende Informationen
Personen: Oaksford, Mike Chater, Nick
CP 4000 O11-a-01
Oaksford, Mike:
Cognition and conditionals : probability and logic in human thinking / edited by Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater. - Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2010. - viii, 410 Seiten : Illustrationen ; 25 cm
ISBN 978-0-19-923329-8 hbk. : GBP 39.95
Allgemeine Psychologie - Buch