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44Unnatural language processingJournal of Logic, Language and Information 8 (3): 363-384. 1999.Computer-based logic proofs are a form of unnatural language in which the process and structure of proof generation can be observed in considerable detail. We have been studying how students respond to multimodal logic teaching, and performance measures have already indicated that students' pre-existing cognitive styles have a significant impact on teaching outcome. Furthermore, a large corpus of proofs has been gathered via automatic logging of proof development. This paper applies a series of …Read more
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5230Human reasoning and cognitive scienceMIT Press. 2008.In the late summer of 1998, the authors, a cognitive scientist and a logician, started talking about the relevance of modern mathematical logic to the study of human reasoning, and we have been talking ever since. This book is an interim report of that conversation. It argues that results such as those on the Wason selection task, purportedly showing the irrelevance of formal logic to actual human reasoning, have been widely misinterpreted, mainly because the picture of logic current in psycholo…Read more
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29The Complex Mind: An Interdisciplinary Approach (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2012.Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- PART I: COMPLEXITY IN ANIMAL MINDS -- Introduction: M.McGonigle-Chalmers -- Relational and Absolute Discrimination Learning by Squirrel Monkeys: Establishing a Common Ground with Human Cognition; B.T.Jones -- Serial List Retention by Non-Human Primates: Complexity and Cognitive Continuity; F.R.Treichler -- The Use of Spatial Structure in Working Memory: A Comparative Standpoint; C.De Lillo -- The Emergenc…Read more
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98Connectionism, classical cognitive science and experimental psychologyAI and Society 4 (1): 73-90. 1990.Classical symbolic computational models of cognition are at variance with the empirical findings in the cognitive psychology of memory and inference. Standard symbolic computers are well suited to remembering arbitrary lists of symbols and performing logical inferences. In contrast, human performance on such tasks is extremely limited. Standard models donot easily capture content addressable memory or context sensitive defeasible inference, which are natural and effortless for people. We argue t…Read more
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14Bounded rationality: from fast and frugal heuristics to logic programming and backMind and Society 22 (1): 33-51. 2023.The notion of “bounded rationality” was introduced by Simon as an appropriate framework for explaining how agents reason and make decisions in accordance with their computational limitations and the characteristics of the environments in which they exist (seen metaphorically as two complementary scissor blades).We elaborate on how bounded rationality is usually conceived in psychology and on its relationship with logic. We focus on the relationship between heuristics and some non-monotonic logic…Read more
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36Semantic Interpretation as Computation in Nonmonotonic Logic: The Real Meaning of the Suppression TaskCognitive Science 29 (6): 919-960. 2005.Interpretation is the process whereby a hearer reasons to an interpretation of a speaker's discourse. The hearer normally adopts a credulous attitude to the discourse, at least for the purposes of interpreting it. That is to say the hearer tries to accommodate the truth of all the speaker's utterances in deriving an intended model. We present a nonmonotonic logical model of this process which defines unique minimal preferred models and efficiently simulates a kind of closed-world reasoning of pa…Read more
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156Semantics as a foundation for psychology: A case study of Wason's selection task (review)Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10 (3): 273-317. 2001.We review the various explanations that have been offered toaccount for subjects'' behaviour in Wason ''s famous selection task. Weargue that one element that is lacking is a good understanding ofsubjects'' semantics for the key expressions involved, and anunderstanding of how this semantics is affected by the demands the taskputs upon the subject''s cognitive system. We make novel proposals inthese terms for explaining the major content effects of deonticmaterials. Throughout we illustrate with…Read more
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77“Nonmonotonic” does not mean “probabilistic”Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (1): 102-103. 2009.Oaksford & Chater (O&C) advocate Bayesian probability as a way to deal formally with the pervasive nonmonotonicity of common sense reasoning. We show that some forms of nonmonotonicity cannot be treated by Bayesian methods
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102Logic in the study of psychiatric disorders: Executive function and rule-followingTopoi 26 (1): 97-114. 2007.Executive function has become an important concept in explanations of psychiatric disorders, but we currently lack comprehensive models of normal executive function and of its malfunctions. Here we illustrate how defeasible logical analysis can aid progress in this area. We illustrate using autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as example disorders, and show how logical analysis reveals commonalities between linguistic and non-linguistic behaviours within each disorder, and …Read more
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14Logic in the study of psychiatric disorders: executive function and rule-followingTopoi 26 (1): 97-114. 2007.Executive function has become an important concept in explanations of psychiatric disorders, but we currently lack comprehensive models of normal executive function and of its malfunctions. Here we illustrate how defeasible logical analysis can aid progress in this area. We illustrate using autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as example disorders, and show how logical analysis reveals commonalities between linguistic and non-linguistic behaviours within each disorder, and …Read more
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32A little logic goes a long way: basing experiment on semantic theory in the cognitive science of conditional reasoningCognitive Science 28 (4): 481-529. 2004.
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47A little logic goes a long way: basing experiment on semantic theory in the cognitive science of conditional reasoningCognitive Science 28 (4): 481-529. 2004.
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331Rules, Regularities, Randomness. Festschrift for Michiel van Lambalgen (edited book)Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. 2022.Festschrift for Michiel van Lambalgen on the occasion of his retirement as professor of logic and cognitive science at the University of Amsterdam.
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39Reasoning in Non-probabilistic Uncertainty: Logic Programming and Neural-Symbolic Computing as ExamplesMinds and Machines 27 (1): 37-77. 2017.This article aims to achieve two goals: to show that probability is not the only way of dealing with uncertainty ; and to provide evidence that logic-based methods can well support reasoning with uncertainty. For the latter claim, two paradigmatic examples are presented: logic programming with Kleene semantics for modelling reasoning from information in a discourse, to an interpretation of the state of affairs of the intended model, and a neural-symbolic implementation of input/output logic for …Read more
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36Logic programming, probability, and two-system accounts of reasoning: a rejoinder to Oaksford and ChaterThinking and Reasoning 22 (3): 355-368. 2016.This reply to Oaksford and Chater’s ’s critical discussion of our use of logic programming to model and predict patterns of conditional reasoning will frame the dispute in terms of the semantics of the conditional. We begin by outlining some common features of LP and probabilistic conditionals in knowledge-rich reasoning over long-term memory knowledge bases. For both, context determines causal strength; there are inferences from the absence of certain evidence; and both have analogues of the Ra…Read more
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23Interpretation, representation, and deductive reasoningIn Jonathan Eric Adler & Lance J. Rips (eds.), Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations, Cambridge University Press. pp. 223-248. 2008.
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10Language Evolution: Enlarging the PictureIn David McFarland, Keith Stenning & Maggie McGonigle (eds.), The Complex Mind, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 264-282. 2012.
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48Lewis Carroll , Das Spiel der Logik, Germam Translation by Micheal Zöllner of 671, Edited and with an afterword by Paul Good. Tropen Verlag, Cologne, and Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart, 1998, 199 pp. - Paul Good, Logik—ein Spiel, Therein, pp. 103–119 (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 64 (3): 1368-1370. 1999.
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66Seeking Common Cause between Cognitive Science and Ethnography: Alternative Logic in Cooperative ActionJournal of Cognition and Culture 18 (1-2): 1-30. 2018.Alternative logics have been invoked periodically to explain the systematically different modes of thought of the subjects of ethnography: one logic for ‘us’ and another for ‘them’. Recently anthropologists have cast doubt on the tenability of such an explanation of difference. In cognitive science, [Stenning and van Lambalgen, 2008] proposed that with the modern development of multiple logics, at least several logics are required for making sense of the cognitive processes of reasoning for differe…Read more
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19Semantic Interpretation as Computation in Nonmonotonic Logic: The Real Meaning of the Suppression TaskCognitive Science 29 (6): 919-960. 2005.Interpretation is the process whereby a hearer reasons to an interpretation of a speaker's discourse. The hearer normally adopts a credulous attitude to the discourse, at least for the purposes of interpreting it. That is to say the hearer tries to accommodate the truth of all the speaker's utterances in deriving an intended model. We present a nonmonotonic logical model of this process which defines unique minimal preferred models and efficiently simulates a kind of closed-world reasoning of pa…Read more
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33Seeing Reason: Image and Language in Learning to ThinkOxford University Press. 2002.In an age of information glut, knowledge can be hard to come by. Education must equip us to transform information for our own individual requirements. Full citizenship of the world requires that we learn to reason and communicate. So how do we do it? This book shares new insights into how people process information, and how we use that information to reason, make decisions, and develop theories about the world in which we live.
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9The Cognitive Impact of DiagramsIn and J. Larrazabal J. Ezquerro A. Clark (ed.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Categories, Consciousness, and Reasoning, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 181--196. 1996.
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19Applying semantic concepts to the media assigment problem in multi-media communicationIn Janice Glasgow, N. Hari Narayanan & B. Chandrasekaran (eds.), Diagrammatic reasoning: cognitive and computational perspectives, Aaai Press/mit Press. pp. 303-338. 1995.Our long term goal is an understanding of human communication in terms which would provide the basis for rational design. The kernel would be a theory of the cognitive consequences of allocating the same information to different media and modalities, based on the user's information processing characterised in computational terms. Our theory of the cognitive consequences of media/modality allocation starts from an analysis of differences in logical expressiveness of graphical and linguistic repre…Read more
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1Effects of representational modality and thinking style on learning to solve reasoning problemsIn M. A. Gernsbacher & S. J. Derry (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawerence Erlbaum. pp. 716--721. 1998.
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1Embedding logic in communication: lessons from the logic classroomIn J. F. A. K. van Benthem (ed.), Logic and Argumentation, North-holland. pp. 227--240. 1996.
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Assigning Information to Modalities Comparing Graphical Treatments of the SyllogismHcrc Publications, University of Edinburgh. 1995.
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45Throwing the normative baby out with the prescriptivist bathwaterBehavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (5): 249-249. 2011.It is neither desirable nor possible to eliminate normative concerns from the psychology of reasoning. Norms define the most fundamental psychological questions: What are people trying to do, and how? Even if no one system of reasoning can be the norm, pure descriptivism is as undesirable and unobtainable in the psychology of reasoning as elsewhere in science
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99To Naturalize or Not to Naturalize? An Issue for Cognitive Science as Well as AnthropologyTopics in Cognitive Science 4 (3): 413-419. 2012.Several of Beller, Bender, and Medin’s (2012) issues are as relevant within cognitive science as between it and anthropology. Knowledge-rich human mental processes impose hermeneutic tasks, both on subjects and researchers. Psychology's current philosophy of science is ill suited to analyzing these: Its demand for ‘‘stimulus control’’ needs to give way to ‘‘negotiation of mutual interpretation.’’ Cognitive science has ways to address these issues, as does anthropology. An example from my own wor…Read more