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This book reviews the work of prominent psychologists and philosophers on conditional reasoning. It provides empirical research on how people deal with conditional arguments and examines how conditional statements are used and interpreted in everyday communication.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1. Getting Started
- 2. Conditionals
- 3. Experimental Approaches to the Study of Conditional Reasoning
- 4. Logic and Conditional Reasoning
- 5. Syntactics, Semantics, and Pragmatics in Conditional Reasoning
- 6. Rule Checking
- 7. Counterfactual Thinking
- 8. Counterfactual Thinking 2
- 9. Conditional Reasoning as Probabilistic Reasoning
- 10. The Probability of the Conditional and the Conditional Probability
- 11. Individual Differences
- 12. Theoretical Accounts of Conditional Reasoning
- 13. More Theoretical Accounts
- 14. Final Comments
- References
- Index
About the author
Raymond S. Nickerson is Research Professor of Psychology at Tufts University.
Summary
This book reviews the work of prominent psychologists and philosophers on conditional reasoning. It provides empirical research on how people deal with conditional arguments and examines how conditional statements are used and interpreted in everyday communication.
Additional text
Ray Nickerson is known for being attracted to difficult intellectual puzzles-and also for dropping them in the laps of his friends, to their confusion and delight. In this book, he addresses the shortest word able to induce the longest and often most difficult of puzzles: namely, if. As always, Ray's work is stimulating, powerful, and a joy to read. To follow him is rather like being Dante guided by Virgil, though it is hard at times to decide whether we are traveling through the 'Inferno' or 'Paradiso.' And that is perhaps the great gift of this book."
-Neville Moray, Professor Emeritus of Applied Cognitive Psychology, University of Surrey
