Psychology of Reasoning

This paper explicates an account of argumentative rationality by articulating the common, basic idea of its nature, and then identifying a collection of assumptions inherent in it. Argumentative rationality is then contrasted with dual-process theories of reasoning and rationality prevalent in the psychology of reasoning. It is argued that argumentative rationality properly corresponds only with system-2 reasoning in dual-process theories. This result challenges the prescriptive force of argumentative norms derives if they derive at all from their descriptive accuracy of our cognitive capacities. In response, I propose an activity-based account of reasoning which retains the assumptions of argumentative rationality while recontextualizing the relationship between reasoning as a justificatory activity and the psychological states and processes underlying that activity.

By examining particular cases of belief perseverance following the undermining of their original evidentiary grounds, this paper considers two theories of rational belief revision: foundation and coherence. Gilbert Harman has argued for coherence over foundationalism on the grounds that the foundations theory absurdly deems most of our beliefs to be not rationally held. A consequence of the unacceptability of foundationalism is that belief perseverance is rational. This paper defends the intuitive judgement that belief perseverance is irrational by offering a competing explanation of what goes on in cases like the debriefing paradigm which does not rely upon foundationalist principles but instead shows that such cases are properly viewed as instances of positive undermining of the sort described by the coherence theory.

The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning draws on Bayesian formal frameworks, and some advocates of the new paradigm think of these formal frameworks as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference. I argue that Bayesian theories should not be seen as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference, where by “Bayesian theories” I mean theories that claim that all rational credal states are probabilistically coherent and that rational adjustments of degrees of belief in the light of new evidence must be in accordance with some sort of conditionalization. The problems with the view I am criticizing can best be seen when we look at chains of inferences, rather than single-step inferences. Chains of inferences have been neglected almost entirely within the new paradigm.

We claim that abduction should primarily be studied from the perspective of its use. The big question "What is abduction?" is most often interpreted substantively and this distracts attention from the instrumental aspect of this form of reasoning. We propose to address the problem by asking "How abduction is used?". As a result of our approach we see the fact that abduction needs to be construed as concerned with both generation and evaluation of hypotheses, and, furthermore, that abduction is a compound form of reasoning.

I advance the Radically Enactive Cognition (REC) program by developing Hutto & Satne's (2015) and Hutto & Myin's (2017) idea that contentful cognition emerges through sociocultural activities, which require a contentless form of intentionality. Proponents of REC then face a functional challenge: what is the function of higher cognitive skills, given the empirical findings that engaging in higher-cognitive activities is not correlated with cognitive amelioration (Kornblith, 2012)? I answer that functional challenge by arguing that higher cognition is an adaptive tool of the social systems we are embedded in, therefore, it is not necessarily aimed at achieving better cognitive states. In order to do so, I suggest interpreting key insights from autopoietic enactivism through REC lenses.

Suppose that two competing norms, N1 and N2, can be identified such that a given person’s response can be interpreted as correct according to N1 but incorrect according to N2. Which of these two norms, if any, should one use to interpret such a response? In this paper we seek to address this fundamental problem by studying individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their case judgments and reflective attitudes. To investigate the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task. As a case study, we identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals (N1) versus Inferentialism (N2) and investigate to what extent internally consistent competence models can be reconstructed for the participants on this basis. After extensive empirical investigations, an apparent reasoning error with and-to-if inferences was found in one of these two groups. The implications of this case study for debates on the proper role of normative considerations in psychology are discussed.

Little is known about the aetiology of philosophical intuitions in spite of their central role in analytic philosophy. This paper provides a psychological account of the intuitions that underlie philosophical practice, with a focus on intuitions that underlie the method of cases. I argue that many philosophical intuitions originate from spontaneous, early-developing cognitive processes that also play a role in other cognitive domains. Additionally, they have a skilled, practiced component. Philosophers are expert elicitors of intuitions in the dialectical context of professional philosophy. If this analysis is correct, this should lead to a reassessment of experimental philosophical studies of expertise.

Ranking theory is a formal epistemology that has been developed in over 600 pages in Spohn’s recent book ‘The Laws of Beliefs’, which aims to provide a normative account of the dynamics of beliefs that presents an alternative to current probabilistic approaches. It has long been received in the AI community, but has not yet found application in experimental psychology. The purpose of this paper is to derive clear, quantitative predictions by exploiting a parallel between ranking theory and a statistical model called logistic regression. This approach is illustrated by the development of a model for the conditional inference task using Spohn’s (2013) ranking theoretic approach to conditionals.

[Excerpts from the penultimate draft. Includes the front matter, the first section of the preamble, and chapter 1.] *Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind* attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in “epistemic bad faith” in light of what psychology tells us. For the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting “ego-threatening” thoughts à la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts—e.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However: Self-reflection presupposes an ability to know what one thinks in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just show naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are infallible in a (limited) range self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a “foundation” for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Sostengo l'opportunità di esplorare con attenzione i pro e i contro di un drastico riorientamento della teoria del diritto, e della teoria delle norme in generale, nella direzione di ciò che chiamo " psicodeontica " : l'adozione di un approccio psicologistico. Argomento in difesa di un approccio psicodeontico non in termini generali, ma con riferimento a due ambiti particolari: la teoria del ragionamento giuridico (in particolare, il ragionamento giustificativo giudiziale) e l'elaborazione di una teoria del diritto a due livelli (il livello delle regole e quello dei principi) ispirata a una concezione particolarista del ragionamento pratico. I due temi sono strettamente connessi. Alcuni aspetti della concezione particolarista del ragionamento pratico, di cruciale importanza, si prestano in modo naturale a essere intesi e sviluppati in chiave psicologica. Parole chiave ragionamento giuridico, norma, psicologismo, particolarismo, psicologia del ragionamento.

Los modelos epistemologicos sobre el razonamiento cientifico han sido descritos en terminos de inferencias de tipo deductivo o de tipo inductivo. No obstante, han sido menos explorados los tipos de inferencias abductivas. Explicar los procesos de inferencia abductiva resulta sumamente ilustrativo para dar cuenta de los procesos de resolucion de problemas en el contexto de un modelo epistemologico del descubrimiento cientifico. Asi, el investigador cientifico, por medio de procesos cognoscitivos de tipo abductivo, podra generar una amplia gama de nuevas hipotesis plausibles, y entre ellas decidir racionalmente cuales son capaces de dar cuenta de los datos observacionales.

In this paper I argue that bivalent systems in logic and beyond are often too inexact and that bivalence about truth-values and other value spectra will consequently and generally need to be replaced with multivalence. I begin arguing for that conclusion by showing how, contrary to an at least potential misconception and framed in set theoretical terms, the somewhat reconceived law of excluded middle does not entail bivalence but is entirely compatible with multivalence too. From these logico-semantic considerations I then move on to some ontologico-empirical considerations in favor of multivalence and against bivalence that can be traced back to Lukasiewicz or to the Vienna Circle's logical empiricism. I conclude by pointing out that the paradigm shift from bivalence to multivalence has already occurred in the logic-related and so-called new psychology of reasoning and by going through some options of how the traditional values of "true" and "false" and the spectrum of truth-values can be adapted to a framework of 'quantified multivalence.'

We propose a new account of indicative conditionals, giving acceptability and logical closure conditions for them. We start from Adams' Thesis: the claim that the acceptability of a simple indicative equals the corresponding conditional probability. The Thesis is widely endorsed, but arguably false and refuted by empirical research. To fix it, we submit, we need a relevance constraint: we accept a simple conditional 'If φ, then ψ' to the extent that (i) the conditional probability p(ψ|φ) is high, provided that (ii) φ is relevant for ψ. How (i) should work is well-understood. It is (ii) that holds the key to improve our understanding of conditionals. Our account has (i) a probabilistic component, using Popper functions; (ii) a relevance component, given via an algebraic structure of topics or subject matters. We present a probabilistic logic for simple indicatives, and argue that its (in)validities are both theoretically desirable and in line with empirical results on how people reason with conditionals.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the explanatory resources that Robert Brandom‟s distinction between acknowledged and consequential commitments affords in relation to the problem of logical omniscience. With this distinction the importance of the doxastic perspective under consideration for the relationship between logic and norms of reasoning is emphasized, and it becomes possible to handle a number of problematic cases discussed in the literature without thereby incurring a commitment to revisionism about logic.

Talking it out with others vs. deliberation within and the law of group polarization: Some implications of the argumentative theory of reasoning for deliberative democracy. This paper argues that a new psychological theory—the argumentative theory of reasoning—provides theoretical support for the discursive, dialogical ideal of democratic deliberation. It converges, in particular, with deliberative democrats’ predictions about the positive epistemic properties of talking things out with others. The paper further considers two influential objections to democratic deliberation: first, that “deliberation within” rather than deliberation with others carries most of the burden in terms of changing people’s minds; and second, that the so-called “law of group polarization” casts serious doubts on the value of democratic deliberation and, more generally, the ideal of deliberative democracy.

An organizing theme of the dissertation is the issue of how to make philosophical theories useful for scientific purposes. An argument for the contention is presented that it doesn’t suffice merely to theoretically motivate one’s theories, and make them compatible with existing data, but that philosophers having this aim should ideally contribute to identifying unique and hard to vary predictions of their theories.
This methodological recommendation is applied to the ranking-theoretic approach to conditionals, which emphasizes the epistemic relevance and the expression of reason relations as part of the semantics of the natural language conditional. As a first step, this approach is theoretically motivated in a comparative discussion of other alternatives in psychology of reasoning, like the suppositional theory of conditionals, and novel approaches to the problems of compositionality and accounting for the objective purport of indicative conditionals are presented.
In a second step, a formal model is formulated, which allows us to derive quantitative predictions from the ranking-theoretic approach, and it is investigated which novel avenues of empirical research that this model opens up for.
Finally, a treatment is given of the problem of logical omniscience as it concerns the issue of whether ranking theory (and other similar approaches) makes too idealized assumptions about rationality to allow for interesting applications in psychology of reasoning. Building on the work of Robert Brandom, a novel solution to this problem is presented, which both opens up for new perspectives in psychology of reasoning and appears to be capable of satisfying a range of constraints on bridge principles between logic and norms of reasoning, which would otherwise stand in a tension.

Recently several papers have reported relevance effects on the cognitive assessments of indicative conditionals, which pose an explanatory challenge to the Suppositional Theory of conditionals advanced by David Over, which is influential in the psychology of reasoning. Some of these results concern the "Equation" (P(if A, then C) = P(C|A)), others the de Finetti truth table, and yet others the uncertain and-to-inference task. The purpose of this chapter is to take a Birdseye view on the debate and investigate some of the open theoretical issues posed by the empirical results. Central among these is whether to count these effects as belonging to pragmatics or semantics.

The present paper examines precursors and consequents of perceived relevance of a
proposition A for a proposition C. In Experiment 1, we test Spohn’s (2012, ch. 6) assumption
that ΔP = P(C|A) – P(C|∼A) is a good predictor of ratings of perceived relevance and reason
relations, and we examine whether it is a better predictor than the difference measure (P(C|A) –
P(C)). In Experiment 2, we examine the effects of relevance on probabilistic coherence in Cruz,
Baratgin, Oaksford, and Over’s (2015) uncertain “and-to-if” inferences. The results suggest that
ΔP predicts perceived relevance and reason relations better than the difference measure and that
participants are either less probabilistically coherent in “and-to-if” inferences than initially
assumed or that they do not follow P(if A, then C) = P(C|A) (“the Equation”). Results are
discussed in light of recent results suggesting that the Equation may not hold under conditions of
irrelevance or negative relevance.

We report on a study conceived with the idea that the use of logic in regard to mathematical reasoning as it actually occurs in practice is not limited to its prominent role in formal deductions and proofs. Interpretation of different mathematical situations elicits in fact the use of mostly unconscious forms of reasoning, close to those of narrative processing, which do not coincide with the expectations of traditional logic. This is pervasive, in particular, in educational situations at different levels, as we illustrate with interpretations which can emerge alongside an apparently obvious mathematical statement, namely, Pythagoras Theorem. We defend the position that analyses of "errors", should start by understanding their prevalence and non arbitrariness. Accordingly, we use a nonclassical logics whose features may give new insights to the kind of learning obstacles often found in the literature, as well as in our results.

(pre-publication version) The main goal of this paper is to investigate what explanatory resources Robert Brandom’s distinction between acknowledged and consequential commitments affords in relation to the problem of logical omniscience. With this distinction the importance of the doxastic perspective under consideration for the relationship between logic and norms of reasoning is emphasized, and it becomes possible to handle a number of problematic cases discussed in the literature without thereby incurring a commitment to revisionism about logic. One such case in particular is the preface paradox, which will receive an extensive treatment. As we shall see, the problem of logical omniscience not only arises within theories based on deductive logic; but also within the recent paradigm shift in psychology of reasoning. So dealing with this problem is important not only for philosophical purposes but also from a psychological perspective.

In the last decade Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has started to focus attention on forms of persuasive interaction where computer technologies have the goal of changing users’ behavior and attitudes according to a predefined direction. In this work, we hypothesize a strong connection between logical fallacies (forms of reasoning which are logically invalid but cognitively effective) and some common persuasion strategies adopted within web technologies. With the aim of empirically evaluating our hypothesis, we carried out a pilot study on a sample of 150 e-commerce websites.

In this paper I argue that bivalent systems in logic and beyond are often too inexact and that bivalence about truth-values and other value spectra will consequently and generally need to be replaced with multivalence. I begin arguing for that conclusion by showing how, contrary to an at least potential misconception and framed in set theoretical terms, the somewhat reconceived law of excluded middle does not entail bivalence but is entirely compatible with multivalence too. From these logico-semantic considerations I then move on to some ontologico-empirical considerations in favor of multivalence and against bivalence that can be traced back to Lukasiewicz or to the Vienna Circle’s logical empiricism. I conclude by pointing out that the paradigm shift from bivalence to multivalence has already occurred in the logic-related and so-called new psychology of reasoning and by going through some options of how the traditional values of “true” and “false” and the spectrum of truth-values can be adapted to a framework of ‘quantified multivalence.’

(pre-publication version) Over a decade of research has found strong evidence for P(if A, then C) = P(C|A) (“the Equation”). We argue, however, that it provides an overly simplified picture due to its inability to account for relevance. We manipulated relevance in the evaluation of the probability and acceptability of indicative conditionals and found that relevance moderates the effect of P(C|A). This corroborates the Default and Penalty Hypothesis put forward in this paper. Finally, the probability and acceptability of concessive conditionals (“Even if A, then still C”) were investigated and it was found that the Equation provides a better account for concessive conditionals than for indicatives across relevance manipulations.

We propose a new account of indicative conditionals, giving acceptability and logical closure conditions for them. We start from Adams’ Thesis: the claim that the acceptability of a simple indicative equals the corresponding conditional probability. The Thesis is widely endorsed, but arguably false and refuted by empirical research. To fix it, we submit, we need a relevance constraint: we accept a simple conditional $$\varphi \rightarrow \psi$$ φ → ψ to the extent that (i) the conditional probability $$\mathrm{p}(\psi |\varphi )$$ p ( ψ | φ ) is high, provided that (ii) $$\varphi$$ φ is relevant for $$\psi$$ ψ . How (i) should work is well-understood. It is (ii) that holds the key to improve our understanding of conditionals. Our account has (i) a probabilistic component, using Popper functions; (ii) a relevance component, given via an algebraic structure of topics or subject matters. We present a probabilistic logic for simple indicatives, and argue that its (in)validities are both...

This paper argues that a new psychological theory—the argumentative theory of reasoning—provides theoretical support for the discursive, dialogical ideal of democratic deliberation. It converges, in particular, with deliberative democrats' predictions about the positive epistemic properties of talking things out with others. The paper further considers two influential objections to democratic deliberation: first, that " deliberation within " rather than deliberation with others carries most of the burden in terms of changing people's minds; and second, that the so-called " law of group polarization " casts serious doubts on the value of democratic deliberation and, more generally, the ideal of deliberative democracy. Keywords: deliberative democracy, argumentative theory of reasoning , epistemic democracy, law of group polarization.

Resolução de diferenças com os outros através do diálogo vs. deliberação interna e a lei de polarização do grupo: Algumas implicações da teoria argumentativa do pensamento na demo-cracia deliberativa. Este artigo defende que uma nova teoria psi-cológica – a teoria argumentativa do pensamento – fornece uma base teórica ao ideal discursivo e dialógico da deliberação demo-crática. Converge, em particular, com as previsões dos democra-tas deliberativos acerca das propriedades epistémicas positivas da resolução de diferenças através do diálogo. O presente artigo con-sidera ainda duas objeções importantes à deliberação democrática: em primeiro lugar, que a " deliberação interna " , mais do que a deli-beração com outros, tem uma maior responsabilidade em termos da alteração das ideias dos indivíduos; e, em segundo lugar, que a chamada «lei de polarização do grupo» coloca sérias dúvidas acerca do valor da deliberação democrática e, de uma forma mais geral, acerca do ideal da democracia deliberativa. Palavras-chave: democracia deliberativa; teoria argumentativa do pensamento; democracia epistémica; lei de polarização do grupo.

Epistemic contextualism in the works of S. Cohen, K. DeRose, D. Lewis and others amounts to the semantic thesis that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions or denials vary according to the contextually shifting standards for knowledge attributions and to the indexical character of the predicate “knows”. This semantic variation is primarily due to the pragmatic features of the attributor context, depending on “what is at stake” for the attributor. In this paper contextualism is confronted with some invariantist objections. These objections are supported, first, by the considerations of the alleged, but indeed not purely the semantic or meta-linguistic character of the main contextualist theses: it is argued that contextualism unavoidably descend to the object level, making certain substantive claims about knowledge, and that the ambiguous evidence of contextualist thought-experiments make the truth- oriented or intellectualist invariantist alternative a more plausible and mor...

In this paper two concepts of psychologism in logic are outlined: the one which Frege and Husserl fought against and the new psycholo-gism, or cognitivism, which underlies a cognitive turn in contemporary logic. Four issues such cognitively oriented logic should be interested in are indicated. They concern: new fields opened for logical analysis , new methods and tools needed to address these fields, neural basis of logical reasoning, and an educational problem: how to teach such logic? Several challenging questions, which arise in the context of these issues, are listed.

In this paper, a critical discussion is made of the role of entailments in the so-called New Paradigm of psychology of reasoning based on Bayesian models of rationality (Elqayam & Over, 2013). It is argued that assessments of probabilistic coherence cannot stand on their own, but that they need to be integrated with empirical studies of intuitive entailment judgments. This need is motivated not just by the requirements of probability theory itself, but also by a need to enhance the interdisciplinary integration of the psychology of reasoning with formal semantics in linguistics. The constructive goal of the paper is to introduce a new experimental paradigm, called the Dialogical Entailment task, to supplement current trends in the psychology of reasoning towards investigating knowledge-rich, social reasoning under uncertainty (Oaksford and Chater, 2019). As a case study, this experimental paradigm is applied to reasoning with conditionals and negation operators (e.g. CEM and wide and narrow scope negations). As part of the investigation, participants’ entailment judgments are evaluated against their probability evaluations to assess participants’ cross-task consistency over two experimental sessions.

This article is a general introduction to the psychology of reasoning. Specifically, it focuses on the dual process theory of human cognition. Proponents of the said two-system view hold that human cognition involves two processes (viz., System 1 and System 2). System 1 is an automatic, intuitive thinking process where judgments and reasoning rely on fast thinking and ready-to-hand data. On the other hand, System 2 is a slow, logical cognitive process where our judgments and reasoning rely on reflective, careful analysis and data evaluation. Supposedly, these two cognitive processes are at play in every thinking task, and they sometimes work together and sometimes go against each other.

In this paper, I discuss whether in the Wason selection task, where subjects are asked to select evidence for evaluating a conditional, the most common response is indeed as irrational as many psychologists have maintained. My account of subjects’ performances focuses on (i) how the task is understood by the subjects and (ii) whether their performances can be seen as cases not so much of conditional reasoning, as of hypothesis testing. On this basis and in accordance with Grice’s account of indicative conditionals, I suppose that normally people understand the conditional as involving a “strong” connection between the antecedent and the consequent. Whenever the inference to such a connection is not blocked, subjects will inductively test whether it holds, as they do in ordinary life with reference to wider domains than the narrow one provided by the experimental context. Thus, relative to their goals, their performance could be considered as rational.