To be rational is to be able to reason. Thirty years ago psychologists believed that human reasoning depended on formal rules of inference akin to those of a logical calculus. This hypothesis ran into difficulties, which led to an alternative view: reasoning depends on envisaging the possibilities consistent with the starting point—a perception of the world, a set of assertions, a memory, or some mixture of them. We construct mental models of each distinct possibility and derive a conclusion from them. The theory predicts systematic errors in our reasoning, and the evidence corroborates this prediction. Yet, our ability to use counterexamples to refute invalid inferences provides a foundation for rationality. On this account, reasoning is a simulation of the world fleshed out with our knowledge, not a formal rearrangement of the logical skeletons of sentences.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/43/18243.full.pdf

Mental models and human reasoning

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(15)00030-3.pdf

Logic, probability, and human reasoning

We want to express digital communication with a human touch. So we pay attention to the properties of a door because it links one place to another. We think the linking of different places and sharing of places is one of the substantial qualities of network technology. Another reason that we focus on a door is because it bears great meanings. For example, a door is the first spot for a meeting with someone or for kissing someone goodbye. It could be your children, spouse, or your friends. These days, we talk and say hello to friends by Messenger or mobiles. Accustomed to digital devices which neglect time or space, we expect that the devices can carry our emotions to others. However, these have limits in expression. We want to show through the our work "The Door" that network technology should have a little more humanity and love in the near future.

The Door

Inference with Mental Models

An old view in logic going back to Aristotle is that an inference is valid in virtue of its logical form. Many psychologists have adopted the same point of view about human reasoning: the first step is to recover the logical form of an inference, and the second step is to apply rules of inference that match these forms in order to prove that the conclusion follows from the premises. The present paper argues against this idea. The logical form of an inference transcends the grammatical forms of the sentences used to express it, because logical form also depends on context. Context is not readily expressed in additional premises. And the recovery of logical form leads ineluctably to the need for infinitely many axioms to capture the logical properties of relations. An alternative theory is that reasoning depends on mental models, and this theory obviates the need to recover logical form.

Against Logical Form

We report four experiments investigating conjunctive inferences (from a conjunction and two conditional premises) and disjunctive inferences (from a disjunction and the same two conditionals). The mental model theory predicts that the conjunctive inferences, which require one model, should be easier than the disjunctive inferences, which require multiple models. Formal rule theories predict either the opposite result or no difference between the inferences. The experiments showed that the inferences were equally easy when the participants evaluated given conclusions, but that the conjunctive inferences were easier than the disjunctive inferences (1) when the participants drew their own conclusions, (2) when the conjunction and disjunction came last in the premises, (3) in the time the participants spent reading the premises and in responding to given conclusions, and (4) in their ratings of the difficulty of the inferences. The results support the model theory and demonstrate the importance of reasoners' inferential strategies.

Are Conjunctive Inferences Easier than Disjunctive Inferences? A Comparison of Rules and Models:

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Are Conjunctive Inferences Easier than Disjunctive Inferences? A Comparison of Rules and Models: