Human nonmonotonic reasoning: the importance of seeing the logical strength of arguments
Author(s)
Ford, Marilyn
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2005
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Three studies of human nonmonotonic reasoning are described. The results show that people find such reasoning quite difficult, although being given problems with known subclass-superclass relationships is helpful. The results also show that recognizing differences in the logical strengths of arguments is important for the nonmonotonic problems studied. For some of these problems, specificity - which is traditionally considered paramount in drawing appropriate conclusions - was irrelevant and so should have lead to a "can't tell" response; however, people could give rational conclusions based on differences in the logical ...
View more >Three studies of human nonmonotonic reasoning are described. The results show that people find such reasoning quite difficult, although being given problems with known subclass-superclass relationships is helpful. The results also show that recognizing differences in the logical strengths of arguments is important for the nonmonotonic problems studied. For some of these problems, specificity - which is traditionally considered paramount in drawing appropriate conclusions - was irrelevant and so should have lead to a "can't tell" response; however, people could give rational conclusions based on differences in the logical consequences of arguments. The same strategy also works for problems where specificity is relevant, suggesting that in fact specificity is not paramount. Finally, results showed that subjects' success at responding appropriately to nonmonotonic problems involving conflict relies heavily on the ability to appreciate differences in the logical strength of simple, non-conflicting, statements.
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View more >Three studies of human nonmonotonic reasoning are described. The results show that people find such reasoning quite difficult, although being given problems with known subclass-superclass relationships is helpful. The results also show that recognizing differences in the logical strengths of arguments is important for the nonmonotonic problems studied. For some of these problems, specificity - which is traditionally considered paramount in drawing appropriate conclusions - was irrelevant and so should have lead to a "can't tell" response; however, people could give rational conclusions based on differences in the logical consequences of arguments. The same strategy also works for problems where specificity is relevant, suggesting that in fact specificity is not paramount. Finally, results showed that subjects' success at responding appropriately to nonmonotonic problems involving conflict relies heavily on the ability to appreciate differences in the logical strength of simple, non-conflicting, statements.
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Journal Title
Synthese
Volume
146
Issue
1-2
Subject
Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
History and Philosophy of Specific Fields
Philosophy