Mental Logic

Mental Logic
Author: Martin D.S. Braine
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 521
Release: 1998-04-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135689164

Over the past decade, the question of whether there is a mental logic has become subject to considerable debate. There have been attacks by critics who believe that all reasoning uses mental models and return attacks on mental-models theory. This controversy has invaded various journals and has created issues between mental logic and the biases-and-heuristics approach to reasoning, and the content-dependent theorists. However, despite its pertinence to current issues in cognition, few cognitive scientists really know what the mental-logic theory is, and misapprehensions are prevalent. This volume is a comprehensive presentation of the theory of mental logic and its implications for cognition and development, including the acquisition of language. The theory offered here has three parts. Part I is the mental logic per se that contains a set of inference schemas. Part II is a reasoning program that applies the schemas in lines of reasoning, including a direct-reasoning routine and more sophisticated indirect-reasoning strategies. Part III of the theory is pragmatic, proposing that the basic meaning of each logic particle is in the inferences that are sanctioned by its inference schemas.

Intelligence, Mind, and Reasoning

Intelligence, Mind, and Reasoning
Author: A. Demetriou
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 251
Release: 1994-03-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 008086760X

This volume aims to contribute to the integration of three traditions that have remained separate in psychology. Specifically, the developmental, the psychometric, and the cognitive tradition. In order to achieve this aim, the text deals with these three aspects of human knowing that have been the focus of one or more of the three traditions for many years. Answers are provided to questions such as the following: What is common to intelligence, mind, and reasoning? What is specific to each of these three aspects of human knowing? How does each of them affect the functioning and development of the other?The chapters are organized into two parts. Part I focuses on intelligence and mind and has reasoning at the background. The papers in this part present new theories and methods that systematically attempt to bridge psychometric theories of intelligence with theories of cognitive development or information processing theories. Part II focuses on mind and reasoning and has intelligence at the background. The papers in this part develop models of reasoning and attempt to show how reasoning interacts with mind and intelligence. Two discussion chapters are also included. These highlight the convergences and the divergences of the various traditions as represented in the book.

The Logic of Madness

The Logic of Madness
Author: Matthew Blakeway
Publisher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2016-04-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9780992796150

In assuming that mental illness is a mathematical problem, The Logic of Madness analyses how a human action can be deviant even when rational. It reveals that a person without a genetic or brain abnormality can have an apparent mental disorder that is entirely logical in its structure.

Rationality and Logic

Rationality and Logic
Author: Robert Hanna
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2009-01-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262263114

An argument that logic is intrinsically psychological and human psychology is intrinsically logical, and that the connection between human rationality and logic is both constitutive and mutual. In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals (including humans) and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all (and only) rational animals possess an innate cognitive "logic faculty." Hanna's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or "topic-neutral" science irreconcilably separate from the species- or individual-specific focus of empirical psychology.Logic and psychology went their separate ways after attacks by Frege and Husserl on logical psychologism—the explanatory reduction of logic to empirical psychology. Hanna argues, however, that—despite the fact that logical psychologism is false—there is an essential link between logic and psychology. Rational human animals constitute the basic class of cognizers or thinkers studied by cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural science; it is both an objective or truth-oriented science and a normative human science, as is logic itself.

Reasoning and Thinking

Reasoning and Thinking
Author: K. I. Manktelow
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780863777080

This undergraduate textbook reviews psychological research in the major areas of reasoning and thinking: deduction, induction, hypothesis testing, probability judgement, and decision making. It also covers the major theoretical debates in each area, and devotes a chapter to one of the liveliest issues in the field: the question of human rationality. Central themes that recur throughout the book include not only rationality, but also the relation between normative theories such as logic, probability theory, and decision theory, and human performance, both in experiments and in the world outside the laboratory. No prior acquaintance with formal systems is assumed, and everyday examples are used throughout to illustrate technical and theoretical points. The book differs from others in the market firstly in the range of material covered: other tend to focus primarily on on either reasoning or thinking. It is also the first student-level text to survey an imporatant new theoretical perspective, the information-gain or rational analysis approach, and to review the rationality debate from the standpoint of psuchological research in a wide range of areas.

Psychology of Reasoning

Psychology of Reasoning
Author: K. I. Manktelow
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2004
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781841693101

This collection brings together a set of specially commissioned chapters from leading international researchers in the psychology of reasoning. Its purpose is to explore the historical, philosophical and theoretical implications of the development of this field. Taking the unusual approach of engaging not only with empirical data but also with the ideas and concepts underpinning the psychology of reasoning, this volume has important implications both for psychologists and other students of cognition, including philosophers. Sub-fields covered include mental logic, mental models, rational analysis, social judgement theory, game theory and evolutionary theory. There are also specific chapters dedicated to the history of syllogistic reasoning, the psychology of reasoning as it operates in scientific theory and practice, Brunswickian approaches to reasoning and task environments, and the implications of Popper's philosophy for models of behaviour testing. This cross-disciplinary dialogue and the range of material covered makes this an invaluable reference for students and researchers into the psychology and philosophy of reasoning.

Mental Models

Mental Models
Author: Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 1983
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780674568822

This book offers a unified theory of the major propertries of mind, including comprehension, inference, and consciousness. The author argues that we apprehend the world by building inner mental replicas of the relationships among objects and events that concern us. The mind is essentially a model-building device that can itself be modeled on a computer. The book provides a blueprint for building such a model and numberous important illustrations of how to do it.

Perspectives On Thinking And Reasoning

Perspectives On Thinking And Reasoning
Author: Stephen Newstead
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2013-06-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134834330

This collection of essays focuses on three reasoning problems devised by Peter Wason - the selection task, the 2-4-6 task, and the THOG problem - which have had a considerable influence since their invention.; The reasons why people make so many errors in these seemingly simple tasks are still not fully understood. A variety of different theoretical perspectives have been used in trying to explain performance. These include the mental models approach, the pragmatic reasoning approach, and the mental logic approach. This book contains chapters which discuss all these theories. Other chapters review the literature or offer alternative theoretical perspectives. A final chapter by Peter Wason describes how he came to create the tasks discussed.

The Nature of Reasoning

The Nature of Reasoning
Author: Jacqueline P. Leighton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2004
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521009287

We are bombarded with information - press releases, television news, Internet websites, and office memos, just to name a few - on a daily basis. However, the important conclusions that may or need to be inferred from such information are typically not provided. We must draw the conclusions by ourselves. How do we draw these conclusions? This book addresses how we reason to reach sensible conclusions. The purpose of this book is to organize in one volume what is known about reasoning, such as its structural prerequisites, its mechanisms, its susceptibility to pragmatic influences, its pitfalls, and the bases for its development. Given that reasoning underlies so many of our intellectual activities - when we learn, criticize, analyze, judge, infer, evaluate, optimize, apply, discover, imagine, devise, and create - we stand to gain a great deal if we can learn to define, operate, apply, and nurture our reasoning.

The Logical Foundations of Cognition

The Logical Foundations of Cognition
Author: John Macnamara
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 1994-10-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0195357825

This volume examines the role of logic in cognitive psychology in light of recent developments, such as Gonzalo Reyes's new semantic theory. Chapters reveal the prospects of applying these new theories to cognitive psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, the philosophy of language and logic.