Author(s): Quelhas, Ana Cristina ; Rasga, Célia ; Johnson‐Laird, P. N.
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/10055
Origin: Repositório do ISPA - Instituto Universitário
Subject(s): Dual processes; Mental models; Modal logics; Syllogisms; Quantifiers; Possibilities
People tend to conclude: Paulo is possibly a businessman (Experiment 1). It seems plausible, and itfollows from an intuitive mental model in which Paulo is one of a set of artists who are businessmen.Further deliberation can yield a model of an alternative possibility in which Paulo is not one of theartists, which confirms that the conclusion is only a possibility. The snag is that standard modal logics,which deal with possibilities, cannot yield a particular conclusion to any premises: Infinitely manyfollow validly (from any premises) but they do not include the present conclusion. Yet, further experi-ments corroborated a new mental model theory’s predictions for various inferences (Experiment 2), forthe occurrence of factual conclusions drawn from premises about possibilities (Experiment 3) and forinferences from premises of modal syllogisms (Experiment 4). The theory is therefore plausible, butwe explore the feasibility of a cognitive theory based on modifications to modal logic
