The Logic of Plausible Reasoning: A Core Theory

The paper presents a core theory of human plausible reasoning based on analysis of people's answers to everyday questions about the world. The theory consists of three parts:

• 1 a formal representation of plausible inference patterns; such as deductions, inductions, and analogies, that are frequently employed in answering everyday questions;
• 2 a set of parameters, such as conditional likelihood, typicality, and similarity, that affect the certainty of people's answers to such questions; and
• 3 a system relating the different plausible inference patterns and the different certainty parameters.

This is one of the first attempts to construct a formal theory that addresses both the semantic and parametric aspects of the kind of everyday reasoning that pervades. all of human discourse.     

Proof Theory for Reasoning with Euler Diagrams: A Logic Translation and Normalization

Proof-theoretical notions and techniques, developed on the basis of sentential/symbolic representations of formal proofs, are applied to Euler diagrams. A translation of an Euler diagrammatic system into a natural deduction system is given, and the soundness and faithfulness of the translation are proved. Some consequences of the translation are discussed in view of the notion of free ride, which is mainly discussed in the literature of cognitive science as an account of inferential efficacy of diagrams. The translation enables us to formalize and analyze free ride in terms of proof theory. The notion of normal form of Euler diagrammatic proofs is investigated, and a normalization theorem is proved. Some consequences of the theorem are further discussed: in particular, an analysis of the structure of normal diagrammatic proofs; a diagrammatic counterpart of the usual subformula property; and a characterization of diagrammatic proofs compared with natural deduction proofs.     

A Logic For Inductive Probabilistic Reasoning

Inductive probabilistic reasoning is understood as the application of inference patterns that use statistical background information to assign (subjective) probabilities to single events. The simplest such inference pattern is direct inference: from “70% of As are Bs” and “a is an A” infer that a is a B with probability 0.7. Direct inference is generalized by Jeffrey’s rule and the principle of cross-entropy minimization. To adequately formalize inductive probabilistic reasoning is an interesting topic for artificial intelligence, as an autonomous system acting in a complex environment may have to base its actions on a probabilistic model of its environment, and the probabilities needed to form this model can often be obtained by combining statistical background information with particular observations made, i.e., by inductive probabilistic reasoning. In this paper a formal framework for inductive probabilistic reasoning is developed: syntactically it consists of an extension of the language of first-order predicate logic that allows to express statements about both statistical and subjective probabilities. Semantics for this representation language are developed that give rise to two distinct entailment relations: a relation ⊨ that models strict, probabilistically valid, inferences, and a relation that models inductive probabilistic inferences. The inductive entailment relation is obtained by implementing cross-entropy minimization in a preferred model semantics. A main objective of our approach is to ensure that for both entailment relations complete proof systems exist. This is achieved by allowing probability distributions in our semantic models that use non-standard probability values. A number of results are presented that show that in several important aspects the resulting logic behaves just like a logic based on real-valued probabilities alone.     

A Logic for Reasoning about Relative Similarity

A similarity relation is a reflexive and symmetric binary relation between objects. Similarity is relative: it depends on the set of properties of objects used in determining their similarity or dissimilarity. A multi-modal logical language for reasoning about relative similarities is presented. The modalities correspond semantically to the upper and lower approximations of a set of objects by similarity relations corresponding to all subsets of a given set of properties of objects. A complete deduction system for the language is presented.     

The Logic of ADHD: A Brief Review of Fallacious Reasoning

This paper has two central purposes: the first is to survey some of the more important examples of fallacious argument, and the second is to examine the frequent use of these fallacies in support of the psychological construct: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The paper divides 12 familiar fallacies into three different categories—material, psychological and logical—and contends that advocates of ADHD often seem to employ these fallacies to support their position. It is suggested that all researchers, whether into ADHD or otherwise, need to pay much closer attention to the construction of their arguments if they are not to make truth claims unsupported by satisfactory evidence, form or logic.     

The Logic of Dominance Reasoning

The logic of dominance arguments is analyzed using two different kinds of conditionals: indicative (epistemic) and subjunctive (counter‐factual). It is shown that on the indicative interpretation an assumtion of independence is needed for a dominance argument to go through. It is also shown that on the subjunctive interpretation no assumption of independence is needed once the standard premises of the dominance argument are true, but that independence plays an important role in arguing for the truth of the premises of the dominance argument. A key feature of the analysis is the interpretation of the doubly conditional comparative "I will get a better outcome if A than if B" which is taken to have the structure "(the outcome if A) is better than (the outcome if B)".     

The Logic of Team Reasoning

Abstract

Orthodox decision theory presupposes that agency is invested in individuals. An opposing literature allows team agency to be invested in teams whose members use distinctive modes of team reasoning. This paper offers a new conceptual framework, inspired by David Lewis's analysis of common reasons for belief, within which team reasoning can be represented. It shows how individuals can independently endorse a principle of team reasoning which prescribes acting as a team member conditional on assurance that others have endorsed the same principle. It argues that there can be such assurance even when no individual has an obligation to act on team reasoning.     

A STIT Logic for Reasoning About Social Influence

In this paper we propose a method for modeling social influence within the STIT approach to action. Our proposal consists in extending the STIT language with special operators that allow us to represent the consequences of an agent’s choices over the rational choices of another agent.     

墨家逻辑推理模式的新解释

墨家是先秦诸多学派之一,墨家逻辑也是中国古代本土逻辑思想的典范之一。墨子及其后学创立了中国思想史上第一个＂以名举实,以辞舒意,以说出故＂的墨家逻辑体系,成为中国古代逻辑思想发展的优秀代表。墨家逻辑的主要推理模式包括：＂辟＂、＂侔＂、＂援＂、＂推＂等。墨家逻辑思想的研究开启了中国逻辑思想研究的先河,墨家逻辑思想研究是中国逻辑思想研究的核心内容之一。国际逻辑学界对作为非印—欧语言系统的中国逻辑的关注,显示了中国逻辑独立存在的价值。今天的中国逻辑思想研究处于现代逻辑发展与中国现代文化发展的交汇点上,需要我们从逻辑和中国文化的角度来研究中国逻辑思想。用逻辑的一般特性来分析墨家逻辑,依据工具性、形式性和有效性这三个方面,是解释墨家逻辑的一个新角度。     

演绎推理的认知和脑机制研究述评

演绎推理是指假设在某些前提成立的条件下推测必然会出现的结论,它是人类重要的思维形式.不同的认知理论对人在推理过程中表现出的逻辑和非逻辑特性作出了相应的解释和预测,而来自认知神经科学的研究也进一步揭示了推理行为的脑机制,对演绎推理的认知理论进行了验证和发展.本文通过对国内外有关演绎推理认知与脑机制研究现状的回顾,以期能促进该领域研究的不断深入.     

Propositional Plausible Logic: Introduction and Implementation

Plausible Logic allows defeasible deduction with arbitrary propositions, and yet when sufficiently simplified it is very similar to the Defeasible Logics of Billington and Nute. This paper presents Plausible Logic, explains some of the ideas behind the definitions, applies Plausible Logic to an example, and proves a coherence result which indicates that Plausible Logic is well behaved. We also report the first complete implementation of propositional Plausible Logic. The implementation has a web interface which makes it available to researchers and students everywhere. The implementation is evaluated experimentally, and is shown to be capable of handling tens of thousands of rules and sufficiently many disjunctions for realistic problems.     

自闭症儿童语言认知发展理论研究综述

目前,关于语言障碍和认知障碍是自闭症的核心症候,这一点在国际上已无异议,但究其发展障碍的本质如何,则各种见解仍处于分歧之中。本文主要是从认知心理学和发展语言心理学的角度,对自闭症儿童的语言认知障碍及其特征进行分析,旨在为中国儿童自闭症的研究和治疗提供一些参考观点。     

实践的逻辑:从哲学到社会理论

改革开放以来 2 0年的马克思主义哲学研究 ,首先是围绕实践概念展开的 ,而重新解读马克思实践概念的时代背景 ,就是现代化的社会实践运动。可以说 ,对马克思实践概念的重新解读和对中国社会状况的体认是同步展开的 :1 978年关于“实践是检验真理的唯一标准”的大讨论使实践范畴成为马克思主义哲学认识论的核心概念 ,社会生活而非经典理论成为判断历史进步的试金石。与之相应 ,以发展生产力为核心的经济建设取代阶级斗争成为社会生活的主潮。 80年代初围绕异化和人道主义展开的讨论则将实践理论研究进一步引入社会历史领域 ,实践的历史观意义…     

The Influence of Linguistic Form on Reasoning: The Case of Matching Bias

A well-established phenomenon in reasoning research is matching bias : a tendency to select information that matches the lexical content of propositional statements, regardless of the logically critical presence of negations. Previous research suggested, however, that the effect might be restricted to reasoning with conditional statements. This paper reports two experiments in which participants were required to construct or identify true and false cases of propositional rules of several kinds, including universal statements, disjunctions, and negated conjunctions. Matching bias was observed across all rule types but largely restricted to problems where participants were required to falsify rather than to verify the rules. A third experiment showed a similar generalization across linguistic forms in the Wason selection task with only if conditionals substituted for universals. The results are discussed with reference to contemporary theories of propositional reasoning.     

Language and Operations in Children's Class Inclusion Reasoning: The Operational Semantic Theory of Reasoning

In this article we critique two prominent theories of reasoning—mental logic and mental models—and argue that reasoning does not consist of either applying logical rules or constructing mental models. Instead, we propose anoperational semantictheory of reasoning, according to which reasoning is based on children's operational understanding of key terms in a given problem. We then go on to consider an important recent developmental theory of reasoning, fuzzy-trace theory. In order to illustrate the view of reasoning proposed here we report a study of class inclusion. Dramatic differences in class inclusion performance were found as the result of linguistic context; performance was significantly higher when an explicit request for a subclass comparison preceded the class inclusion question as compared to a standard condition when the class inclusion question alone was asked. This was the case, however, only when the prior subclass comparison question referred to the same dimensions as the class inclusion question and not when irrelevant subclasses were referred to. Children's performance was also better when they sorted the materials into the supraordinate class as compared to the subclasses, but not when the experimenter sorted them for the child. These effects due to the operational and linguistic manipulations are discussed in terms of a generaloperational semantictheory of reasoning.     

类比推理的认知过程与计算模型

该文主要论述了类比推理的认知过程及其计算模型。文章对类比推理的概念进行了分析,论述了类比推理的主要成分和认知过程,并进一步围绕类比推理的重要成分介绍了当前类比推理的主要实证研究及研究成果,在此基础上文章进一步概括了类比推理的主要计算模型。