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2 - The psychology of logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

Robert Kowalski
Affiliation:
Imperial College London
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Summary

In this chapter, I will discuss two psychological experiments that challenge the view that people have an inbuilt ability to perform abstract logical reasoning. The first of these experiments, the “selection task”, has been widely interpreted as showing that, instead of logic, people use specialised procedures for dealing with problems that occur commonly in their environment. The second, the “suppression task”, has been interpreted as showing that people do not reason using rules of inference, like forward and backward reasoning, but instead construct a model of the problem and inspect the model for interesting properties. I will respond to some of the issues raised by these experiments in this chapter, but deal with them in greater detail in Chapter 16, after presenting the necessary background material.

Type
Chapter
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Computational Logic and Human Thinking
How to Be Artificially Intelligent
, pp. 24 - 39
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • The psychology of logic
  • Robert Kowalski, Imperial College London
  • Book: Computational Logic and Human Thinking
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984747.005
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  • The psychology of logic
  • Robert Kowalski, Imperial College London
  • Book: Computational Logic and Human Thinking
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984747.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The psychology of logic
  • Robert Kowalski, Imperial College London
  • Book: Computational Logic and Human Thinking
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984747.005
Available formats
×