Reasoning

Reasoning
What is reasoning?
The world typically does not give us complete

information
Reasoning is the set of processes that
enables us to go beyond the information
given

What types of reasoning are there?

Validity vs. Truth

Valid argument: true premises guarantee a true conclusion

It does not necessarily correspond to the truth in the world
Deductive reasoning
Allows us to draw conclusions that must hold given a set of
facts (premises)
Inductive reasoning
Allows us to expand on conclusions
Conclusions need not be true given premises
Category-based induction
Analogical reasoning
Mental models

The logic of the situation

You have tickets to the football game. Go Mean Green!
You agree to meet Bill and Mary at the corner of Fry and Hickory

or at the seats
If you see Mary on the corner of Fry and Hickory, you expect
to see Bill as well.
If you do not see either of them at the corner, you expect to
see them at the seats when you get to the stadium.
The agreement has a logical form
(Bill AND Mary) will be located at corner OR
(Bill AND Mary) will be located at seats
AND and OR are logical operators
They have truth tables

The logic of the situation

Simple logical arguments
If you see Mary
Bill AND Mary
You expect to see Bill

Limits of logical reasoning

We are good at this kind of reasoning

We do it all the time

We can do it in novel situations

Are we good at all kinds of logical reasoning?

What are our limitations?

Conditional Reasoning
Modus Ponens
Modus Tollens

Conditional Reasoning
Each card has a letter on one side, and a

number on the other

Which Cards must you turn over to test the
rule:

If there is a vowel on one side of the card,

then there is an odd number on the other side

Conditional Reasoning
Who do you have to check?
If you have a beer, then you must be 21 or

older?

Conditional Reasoning
These cases are logically the same
Valid Arguments: If premises are true, conclusion

must be true
Affirming the Antecedent

P Q
P
Q (Modus Ponens)

Denying the Consequent

P Q
NOT Q
NOT P (Modus Tollens)

Conditional Reasoning
Invalid Arguments: Conclusion need not be true, even if

premises are true.

Affirming the Consequent
PQ

Denying the Antecedent

PQ
NOT P
NOT Q

The ambiguity of if. In everyday language, sometimes implies a

bidirectional relationship between P and Q (i.e. if and only if)

Logical thinking
Pure logic says that we should be able to reason about any

content
The Ps and Qs in the argument could be anything
However, we are more likely to accept an argument when the
conclusion is true (in the real world) whether it is valid or not
All professors are educators
Some educators are smart
Some professors are smart
This conclusion may be true

The argument is not valid

It is possible that the smart educators are not professors

Logical thinking

We are good with simple logical operators

AND, OR, NOT

Earlier we saw content effects

Wason selection task

Social schemas are easy to reason about and may be context dependent rather
that

Cheng & Holyoak; Tooby & Cosmides

With neutral content it is more difficult

With familiar content it is easier

E.g. Permission: Some precondition must be filled in order to carry out some
action

More complex argument forms can be difficult, especially in unfamiliar contexts

Why do we see these content effects?
Valid deductive arguments ensure that a conclusion is true if the premises are
true

Truth cannot be determined with certainty, thus we must generally reason about
content
We will look at how people reason about content later

Inductive Reasoning
Lucis presentation!

Abductive Reasoning
Say what?
Another form of reasoning is provided by the philosopher C.S.

Peirce
It essentially provides a means for coming up with rules based
on new instances experiences
One way you might think of it is coming up with hypotheses
based on new findings (whereas deduction would deal with
outlining the consequences of a hypothesis and induction in
testing the hypothesis)
Observation: the grass is wet
Explanation: it rained
The explanation is consistent with the domain of the problem

Abuduction
Deduction

Necessary inferences (if A leads to B and B leads to C, then A leads

to C)

All balls in this urn are red

All balls in this particular random sample are taken from this urn
Therefore All balls in this particular random sample are red
Peirce regarded the major premise here as being the Rule, the

minor premise as being the particular Case, and the conclusion

as being the Result of the argument.
The argument is a piece of deduction (necessary inference): an
argument from population to random sample.

Abuduction
Induction
Interchange the conclusion (the Result) with the major
premise (the Rule). Argument becomes:
All balls in this particular random sample are red
All balls in this particular random sample are taken

from this urn

Therefore, All balls in this urn are red

Here is an argument from sample to population, and

this is what Peirce understood to be the core meaning

of induction: argument from random sample to
population

Abuduction
Abduction
New argument: Interchange the conclusion (the Result) with the
minor premise (the Case)
Argument becomes: All balls in this urn are red
All balls in this particular random sample are red
Therefore, All balls in this particular random sample are taken

from this urn.

This is nothing at all like an argument from population to sample

or an argument from sample to population: it is a form of

probable argument different from both deduction and induction

Would later see these as three aspects of the scientific method

Scientific reasoning
Scientific reasoning
Combination of reasoning abilities
Hypothesis testing

Generate an explanation for some phenomenon

Develop an experiment to test the hypothesis
Seek disconfirming evidence

How good are people at this type of reasoning?

How good are scientists at living up to this ideal?

Hypothesis Testing
Deductive side (conditional reasoning)

If the null hypothesis is true, this data would not occur

The data has occurred
The null hypothesis is false
This is true by denying the consequent (modus tollens)
Unfortunately this is not how hypothesis testing takes place

If the null hypothesis is true, this data would be unlikely

The data has occurred
The null hypothesis is false
The problem is that we make the first statement probabilistic,

and that changes everything

Hypothesis Testing
If a person is an American,

If a person is an American,

then he is not a member of

Congress
FALSE
This person is a member of
Congress
Therefore, he is not an
American

then he is probably not a

member of Congress
TRUE
This person is a member of
Congress
Therefore, he is not an
American

This is a valid argument but

This is the form of

untrue as the first premise is

false

hypothesis testing we
undertake, and is logically
incorrect

Hypothesis testing
Induction
Take a sample, calculate a statistic
Generalize to the population
Problem: often no real reason to believe the

population statistic is a constant

Example: though the transformed score is of course a

mean of 100 IQ, IQ raw scores have been improving
over the past couple decades
Begs the question, to what are we generalizing? Just
this population at this time?

Hypothesis testing
People tend to have a confirmation bias
We seek confirming evidence
Scientists also show a confirmation bias

They tend to be more critical of evidence that is

inconsistent with their beliefs.

This always may not be a bad thing (Koehler)

Wason 246 task

You are told to find a rule that generates correct three
number sequences.
You are told that 2-4-6 is a correct sequence
You search for the rule by testing as many sequences
as you want until you are confident you know the rule

Hypothesis testing
Confirmation bias
Many people initially assume the rule is

Sequences increasing by 2

They try sequences like 4-6-8 and 13-15-17

These are sequences that would confirm their

hypothesis

Few people try sequences that would

disconfirm their hypothesis (e.g., 1-2-3 or 32-1)
The actual rule is Any increasing sequence

Few people find the correct rule

Hypothesis testing
Scientists ignore base rates (prior research)
Bayes theorem allows for incorporating prior

probabilities to give a (posterior) probability about a

hypothesis

Yet most of social science does not use Bayesian

methods

Some do not realize that the end of their scientific

efforts is a probability about data, not a hypothesis

Not p(H|D)
But p(D|H)

MCs experience at Research and

Statistical Support
People (students and faculty) come in with:
No clear hypothesis to test
Lack of knowledge regarding the methods

that would allow a hypothesis to be tested

Heavy reliance on prescribed rules which do
little to aid their reasoning about the problem
Vague notion as to which population they are
generalizing to
And a host of other issues

MCs Suggestions for Having Fun

with Science
Have clear ideas
Regarding concepts (operational definitions), their implications, and the
coherency of hypotheses regarding them
Sounds easy but is probably the hardest part and the source of most
problems
Do not ignore prior efforts
Sorry to break it to you, but much has been done in your area of
research
Dont be afraid to explore
Engage your natural curiosity (try new methods and really investigate
your data)
Think causally
Every method is an investigation of a causal model, whats yours?
Remember the big picture
Your research should speak well beyond its specific results (esoterism
progress)

Importance of Content
Analogy and Similarity
How do we use past experience?
What are analogies?
Structural alignment
Similarity

 What to do...
How do you decide what to buy?

Use your past experience

How do you figure out which experience is relevant?

Using prior knowledge

Use of prior knowledge is guided by similarity

How can we study this process?

Studying pairs of items

Study perceptions of similarity when all information is
available

Contrast model
Tversky (1977)
Had people list features of concepts
Had other people rate the similarity of concepts
Compared the feature lists
Similarity increases with common features, similarity

decreases with distinctive features

Similarity ratings were positively related to the number

of common features
Similarity ratings were negatively related to the number
of distinctive features

Analogy

Often, things being compared are not very similar.

Atom vs. Solar system

Analogies preserve relations

The Atom and the Solar System have similar relations among their parts.

The Atom

The Solar System

cause(
greater(charge(nucleus)
charge(electron)),
revolve(electron,nucleus))
cause(
greater(mass(Sun)
mass(planet)),
revolve(planet,Sun))

The attributes of the objects are not similar.

The nucleus is not hot, the planets are not small etc.

Structure mapping
Structured

representations
Relations connect the
objects
Items are placed in
correspondence when
they play the same role
in a matching relational
system

Analogical Inference
Can make inferences

about target domain

Inferences based on
correspondences
between the base and
target
Allows us to learn from
experience

 Types of similarity

 Focus on alignable differences

Gentner & Markman (1994)
Ss given 40 word pairs

20 highly similar, 20 highly dissimilar

Hotel-Motel
Magazine-Kitten
List one difference for as many pairs as possible in 5
minutes

More differences listed for similar pairs than dissimilar

pairs

Reflects that alignable differences are easier to find for

similar pairs than for dissimilar pairs

Similarity and cognition

Similarity enables us to use background knowledge
Recognize how a new case is like an old one
Structure mapping/structural alignment
Relations are important in similarity comparisons
Commonalities and Alignable differences are key
Nonalignable differences are less important
Differences are easy to find for similar things
Structural alignment affects cognitive processing

Reasoning and Mental Models

Mental models
Intuitive Theories and Nave physics

Mental Models and Intuitive Theories

Mental models allow us to reason about devices
Kind of like scripts and schemas discussed earlier
People often have causal information about the way

things work

Used to allow us to get through the world

Information may be flawed

Three types of mental models

Logical mental models
Analogical mental models
Causal models

Logical and Analogical Models

Logical mental models
Used to solve logic problems
Johnson-Laird
Contain empty symbols that are manipulated
All Archers are Bankers
No Bankers are Chemists
?
Useful primarily for logic puzzles
Analogical mental models
Sometimes we understand one device by analogy to another
Electricity and water flow
Voltage <--> Water pressure
Current <--> Flow rate
Resistance <--> Width of pipe

Causal Models
Causal models allow us to explain and understand

the world around us

Note that it is not exactly clear what may be
determined what a cause is, and that is a separate
question from how we come to a determination of a
causal relationship

White 1990, Ideas about Causation in Philosophy and

Psychology

Nevertheless our (often flawed) notions of causal

relationships can have profound effects on our ability

to reason and understand

Intuitive Theories
Nave physics
What would happen to a ball shot through this

pipe?
People often respond by assuming curvilinear
momentum

McCloskey and Proffitt

Even happens if they carry out an action

Intuitive Theories
Why do we err?
Our nave physics matches our

observations

The world has friction, and so

there are unseen forces that
act in opposition to seen
forces
Our nave physics is often
accurate for things we can do
with our bodies

Only when we create larger

machines do the differences

become important
Should not be a surprise

Newtonian physics is only a

few hundred years old
Aristotelian mechanics is
closer to our daily experience

How deep are our models?

Shallowness of explanation

Keil
People believe they understand more than they do
Asked college students about devices
Toilet, Car ignition, Bicycle derailleur
Said they understood devices, but could not actually explain
them
Why does this happen?
When we know how to use an object and it is familiar, we
believe we know how it works

Summary
Mental models
Logical mental models
Analogical mental models
Causal mental models
Nave physics

Physical beliefs sometimes diverge from truth

Sufficient to get us around the world

Scientific reasoning
People generate pretty good tests
Often show a confirmation bias