Mental Models

1. On a Dispute within Cognitive Science over the Nature of Human Reasoning (Is It Syntactic or Semantic?):
   • GO TO THIS WEBSITE:
     • "So you think you're logical?"
     AND PARTICIPATE IN AN EXPERIMENT BEFORE READING FURTHER!
     

   • General Overviews:
     1. A Logical Illusion

     2. Laird-Johnson, P.N.; Girotto, Vittorio; & Legrenzi, Paolo (1998), "Mental Models: A Gentle Guide for Outsiders"

     3. Selmer Bringsjord, Ron Noel, Elizabeth Bringsjord (1998), "In Defense of Logical Minds"
        • A nice overview on the psychology of reasoning.

   • The main historical source:
     Johnson-Laird, Philip N. (1983), Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
     
     • See also:
       Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1981), "Mental Models in Cognitive Science", in Donald A. Norman (ed.), Perspectives on Cognitive Science (Norwood, NJ: Ablex; and Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum): 147-191.

   • An excellent survey article that clearly sets the grounds for the dispute:
     Johnson-Laird, P.N.; Byrne, Ruth M.J.; & Schaeken, Walter (1992), "Propositional Reasoning by Model", Psychological Review 99(3): 418-439.
     • PDF

   • Rips, Lance J. (1994), The Psychology of Proof: Deductive Reasoning in Human Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

   • Johnson-Laird, Philip N. (1997), "Rules and Illusions: A Critical Study of Rips's The Psychology of Proof", Minds and Machines 7(3): 387-407.

   • Rips, Lance J. (1997), "Goals for a Theory of Deduction: Reply to Johnson-Laird", Minds and Machines 7(3): 409-424.

   • Johnson-Laird, Philip N. (1997), "An End to the Controversy? A Reply to Rips", Minds and Machines 7(3): 425-432.

   • Fetzer, James H. (1999), "Deduction and Mental Models", Minds and Machines 9(1): 105-110.

   • Johnson-Laird, Philip N., & Byrne, Ruth M.J. (1999), "Models Rule, OK? A Reply to Fetzer", Minds and Machines 9(1): 111-118.

   • Fetzer, James H. (1999), "Mental Models: Reasoning without Rules", Minds and Machines 9(1): 119-126.

2. Related to the previous item, two papers on the proper role of psychological studies of human reasoning in the creation of formal models of reasoning:

   • Pelletier, Francis Jeffry & Elio, Renée (1997), "What Should Default Reasoning Be, by Default?", Computational Intelligence 13(2): 165-187.

   • Pelletier, Francis Jeffry, & Elio, Renée (2005), "The Case for Psychologism in Default and Inheritance Reasoning", Synthese 146(1): 7-35.
   
   
   

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   Copyright © 2002--2006 by William J. Rapaport (rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu)
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