Everyday reasoning and conditionals
We use conditionals in many moments of our lives: to describe causalities, to tell people what to do, and even in law we use conditionals. In classical logic there are clear rules on how conditionals should be interpreted and understood. But how do we understand and reason with conditionals in our daily lives? How do our prior knowledge, emotions, preferences, and beliefs affect our reasoning? Do we take into account how conditionals are phrased?
Everyday reasoning is defeasible: people withdraw previously drawn conclusions in light of additional information. For instance, given the conditional “If Jack does sports, then he loses weight” and the fact “Jack does sports” people often reject the conclusion that he will lose weight because they know that there are defeaters, i.e., circumstances that can prevent Jack from losing weight although he does sports (e.g., wrong exercises). In this project we investigate how defeasible reasoning is affected by content-related factors such as expertise, emotions, and beliefs, but also how context-related factors affect defeasible reasoning. Does it make a difference whether a conditional is phrased with a specific name or not? And can instructions and response format affect reasoning?
Contact: Dr. L. Estefania Gazzo Castaneda, Prof. Dr. Markus Knauff