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A Priori True and False Conditionals
Author(s) -
Quelhas Ana Cristina,
Rasga Célia,
JohnsonLaird Philip N.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12479
Subject(s) - a priori and a posteriori , probabilistic logic , interpretation (philosophy) , meaning (existential) , mathematics , computer science , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , psychology , epistemology , philosophy , programming language
The theory of mental models postulates that meaning and knowledge can modulate the interpretation of conditionals. The theory's computer implementation implied that certain conditionals should be true or false without the need for evidence. Three experiments corroborated this prediction. In Experiment 1, nearly 500 participants evaluated 24 conditionals as true or false, and they justified their judgments by completing sentences of the form, It is impossible that A and ___ appropriately. In Experiment 2, participants evaluated 16 conditionals and provided their own justifications, which tended to be explanations rather than logical justifications. In Experiment 3, the participants also evaluated as possible or impossible each of the four cases in the partitions of 16 conditionals: A and C , A and not‐C , not‐A and C , not‐A and not‐C . These evaluations corroborated the model theory. We consider the implications of these results for theories of reasoning based on logic, probabilistic logic, and suppositions.