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Psychology of Human Thought • Chapter 7 • 113 Evans Deductive Reasoning Chapter 7 Deductive Reasoning JONATHAN ST. B. T. EVANS University of Plymouth A deduction is a conclusion that follows from things is also involved in hypothetical thinking, when we we believe or assume. Frequently, we combine some ask ‘What if?’ questions. An example is science fact or observation with a rule or rules that we al- in which theories must be tested against empirical ready believe. For example, you meet Sue, who tells evidence. Scientific theories take the form of rules, you that Mary is her mother. You immediately infer often formalised with mathematics. When experi- that Sue is Mary’s daughter, although that is not the mental studies are run, we set up some conditions fact that was presented to you. This means that you and then predict the outcome. The prediction is a must carry around rules such as deduction, which is used to test the theory. For exam- ple, climate change scientists have been predicting If x is the mother of y and y is female, then y is for the past twenty years or more that warming tem- the daughter of x peratures would disrupt the jet stream and lead to Of course, I am not saying that you are conscious more extreme weather events. These predictions of this rule or of applying it to make this deduc- were calculated from their mathematical models, tion but it must be there in some form in your brain, which is a form of deductive reasoning. Both ab- together with some mechanism for applying it to normal jet stream flows and extreme weather events facts and observations. In this case, the inference have been observed in recent years with increasing occurs rapidly and effortlessly but this is not always frequency, lending credibility to these models. the case with deductive reasoning. Take the case of For deduction to be useful, it needs to be accurate. claiming allowances when completing an income This has been recognised in the discipline of philos- tax return. In this case there may be many rules ophy for centuries. Philosophers devised systems of and their wording may be complex and opaque to logic, whose purpose is to ensure accurate deduction. those who are not expert in tax law. If your financial A logically valid argument is one whose conclusion affairs are complex, even establishing the relevant necessarily follows from its premises. Put simply, facts may be headache. This is why people often this means that in a logical argument the conclusion pay expert tax advisers to do the reasoning for them. must be true if the premises are true. If the mother- Deduction has a clear and obvious benefit for daughter rule given earlier is true (which it is by human beings. Our memories are limited and our convention) and your observation that Sue is female brains can only store so many beliefs about the is also correct, then she must be Mary’s daughter. world. However, if we also hold a number of general rules, then these can be applied to draw out impli- Logic provides rules for reasoning. Here are a cations as and when they are required. Deduction couple of examples https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.470.c6670 Psychology of Human Thought • Chapter 7 • 113 Evans Deductive Reasoning Modus Ponens Given if x then y, and the assump- The deduction paradigm tests whether people un- tion of x, y is a valid conclusion trained in logic can make valid inferences. The idea behind this is that if logic is the basis for rationality Disjunction elimination Given x or y and not-x, in everyday thinking then everyone should comply y is a valid conclusion with it, not just those who have taken logic classes. Modus Ponens is very useful, because it means So the first condition in this method is to exclude we can state hypothetical beliefs, which only apply participants with formal training. The next is to when some condition is met. Some of the condi- present them with some premises, or assumptions, tional sentences we use in everyday life are neces- from which a logical deduction can be made. Of- sarily true, for example, ‘if a number is even and ten a conclusion is also given and people are asked greater than two, it cannot be prime’, but most are whether it follows or not. Two other instructions are not. For example, we may advise someone ‘if you usually given: (1) assume that the premises given catch the 8.00 am train then you will get to work on are true and (2) only make or endorse a conclusion time’. If this is generally true, then it is good advice, which necessarily follows from them. Given these but of course the train might break down. The real instructions, only the form of the argument should world rarely allows inferences to be certain, but we matter, not the content. For example, people should nevertheless use conditional statements a great deal always agree that Modus Ponens and disjunction because of the natural power of Modus Ponens. A elimination are valid arguments, no matter what we disjunctive statement is an either-or. For example, substitute for x and y in the rules given above. By someone might say ‘I will either catch the 8.00 am this means, the paradigm assesses whether or not train or take the bus at 8.10’. If you later learn that people are logical in their deductive reasoning. they did not catch the train you can deduce that they took the bus instead. Once again, in the real world, the inference will not be certain. The individual 7.1 The Deduction Paradigm: The may have called in sick and not gone to work at all. Main Methods and Findings But our deduction is valid, given the assumptions on which is based. A small number of experiments on deductive rea- There is a tradition in philosophy that logic is soning were published early in the twentieth century the basis for rational thought (Henle, 1962; Wason (Wilkins, 1928; Woodworth & Sells, 1935), which & Johnson-Laird, 1972). This view held a power- immediately demonstrated what was to come from ful influence on psychology during the second half the intensive study that occurred from the 1960s of the twentieth century and was responsible for a onwards. That is to say, people were observed to major method of studying human reasoning, which make frequent logical errors, to show systematic I will call the deduction paradigm (Evans, 2002). biases, and to be influenced by their beliefs about Huge numbers of experiments were run with this the content of the premises and conclusions. All paradigm and I will try to summarise their main find- of these findings have been replicated many times ings in this chapter. While many important things since using three major methods, or sub-paradigms. were learnt about the nature of human thinking and These are syllogistic reasoning, conditional infer- reasoning, a lot of psychologists eventually lost faith ence, and the Wason selection task. In this section in the importance of logic for rational thinking. In I will discuss each in turn, explaining the methods recent years, this has a led many to revise their meth- and typical findings. ods and adopt what is called the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. I will explain the new 7.1.1 Syllogistic Reasoning paradigm and some of the findings it has led to at the end of this chapter. For now, I will focus on the A syllogism involves two premises and three terms, deduction paradigm and the theories and findings which I will call A, B and C. This is the most an- that are associated with it. cient system of logic, devised by Aristotle. You may 114 • Psychology of Human Thought • Chapter 7 Syllogistic Reasoning Evans have come across the famous syllogism ‘All men B, and C could be related. For the argument to be are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is valid, its conclusion has to be true in all models of mortal.’ Classical syllogisms have statements in four this three-way relationship that the premises allow. moods, shown in Table 7.1 (a). These statements A fallacy is an argument whose conclusion need can be used for either the first premise, the second not be true, given the premises. A basic finding premise, or the conclusion in any combination. Let with syllogistic reasoning is that participants en- us consider them in turn. dorse many fallacies. This has been reported by many authors and confirmed in the one study (to Figure 7.1 shows diagrammatically several differ- my knowledge) that presented every possible com- ent models for the relation between two categories, bination of premises and conclusions for evaluation A and B. When we examine the different statements (Evans, Handley, Harper, & Johnson-Laird, 1999). in Table 7.1 (a) we see that most of them are ambigu- But these mistakes are not random – there are sys- ous and can be represented by at least two different tematic biases in syllogistic reasoning. Consider the models. For example, All A are B would be true for following syllogism: a model of identity – All men have Y chromosomes – or where B includes A – All boys are male. No A All A are B are B is unambiguous; it can only refer to a model of exclusion. Some A are B is highly ambiguous – it is true in all models except exclusion. Finally, All B are C Some A are not B is true for exclusion but also for a model in which A includes B – Some males are Therefore, All C are A not boys.
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