Mental Logic (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780805823882)

Over the past decade, the question of whether there is a mental logic has become subject to considerable debate. There have been attacks by critics who believe that all reasoning uses mental models and return attacks on mental-models theory. This controversy has invaded various journals and has created issues between mental logic and the biases-and-heuristics approach to reasoning, and the content-dependent theorists. However, despite its pertinence to current issues in cognition, few cognitive scientists really know what the mental-logic theory is, and misapprehensions are prevalent. This volume is a comprehensive presentation of the theory of mental logic and its implications for cognition and development, including the acquisition of language.

The theory offered here has three parts. Part I is the mental logic per se that contains a set of inference schemas. Part II is a reasoning program that applies the schemas in lines of reasoning, including a direct-reasoning routine and more sophisticated indirect-reasoning strategies. Part III of the theory is pragmatic, proposing that the basic meaning of each logic particle is in the inferences that are sanctioned by its inference schemas.

Author: Martin D. S. Braine
ISBN-10: 0805823883
ISBN-13: 9780805823882
Publisher: Psychology Press
Language: English
Published: 04/01/1998
Pages: 490
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.11lbs
Size: 9.42h x 6.22w x 1.35d