Ruth M J Byrne
Biographic Data
| ID | 4336246 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth M J Byrne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth M J |
| FAMILY NAME | Byrne |
| SIGNATURE | BYRNE R M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Trinity College Dublin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2240-1211 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Inference and Imagination
Our ability to imagine alternatives to reality is central to everyday cognition. Our competence in reasoning depends not only on our capacity to envisage the relevant facts, but also on our proficiency in simulating alternatives to them. I discuss how our skill in making deductive inferences depends on imagining possibilities. To illustrate, I consider evidence on the suppression of inferences, the cognitive processes based on mental models that …
On the different content of counterfactual and causal explanations
We report the results of five experiments that identify situations in which counterfactual and causal explanations contain the same or different content. For stories about an exceptional event, participants focused on the exceptional event when they created counterfactual explanations but not as often when they created causal explanations in Experiment 1. For stories about a controllable choice, they referred to the controllable choice when they …
How people think about possibilities
Hypothetical thinking is an extraordinary human ability that allows people to think beyond the facts of a situation to imagine alternative possibilities. I first consider how people understand factual conditionals, such as, ‘if there was an apple in the fruit bowl there was a banana’, then how they understand counterfactual conditionals, such as, ‘if Pearl had studied harder she would have passed the exam’, and then how they understand counterpos…
“If only” counterfactual thoughts about cooperative and uncooperative decisions in social dilemmas
We examined how people think about how things could have turned out differently after they made a decision to cooperate or not in three social interactions: the Prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1), the Stag Hunt dilemma (Experiment 2), and the Chicken game (Experiment 3). We found that participants who took part in the game imagined the outcome would have been different if a different decision had been made by the other player, not themselves; they…
Counterfactual Thought
People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think "if only" or "what if" and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgment…
Mental Models
People construct small‐scale models of reality to understand the world and descriptions of it. Their iconic mental representations capture structural aspects of the elements simulated. They think about alternative possibilities that are consistent with assertions that contain logical connectives such as “if” and “or,” quantifiers such as “all” or “some,” and relational terms such as “in front of” or “before.” They reason and make decisions by com…
The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality
The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. This accessible and original monograph explores a central aspect of the imagination, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are guided by the same principles that underlie rational thoughts. Research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed; in The Rational Imaginatio…
Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference.
The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities…
The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality
The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. This accessible and original monograph explores a central aspect of the imagination, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are guided by the same principles that underlie rational thoughts. Research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed; in The Rational Imaginatio…
Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference.
The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities…
The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality
The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. This accessible and original monograph explores a central aspect of the imagination, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are guided by the same principles that underlie rational thoughts. Research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed; in The Rational Imaginatio…
Mental Models
People construct small‐scale models of reality to understand the world and descriptions of it. Their iconic mental representations capture structural aspects of the elements simulated. They think about alternative possibilities that are consistent with assertions that contain logical connectives such as “if” and “or,” quantifiers such as “all” or “some,” and relational terms such as “in front of” or “before.” They reason and make decisions by com…
Counterfactual Thought
People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think "if only" or "what if" and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgment…
“If only” counterfactual thoughts about cooperative and uncooperative decisions in social dilemmas
We examined how people think about how things could have turned out differently after they made a decision to cooperate or not in three social interactions: the Prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1), the Stag Hunt dilemma (Experiment 2), and the Chicken game (Experiment 3). We found that participants who took part in the game imagined the outcome would have been different if a different decision had been made by the other player, not themselves; they…
How people think about possibilities
Hypothetical thinking is an extraordinary human ability that allows people to think beyond the facts of a situation to imagine alternative possibilities. I first consider how people understand factual conditionals, such as, ‘if there was an apple in the fruit bowl there was a banana’, then how they understand counterfactual conditionals, such as, ‘if Pearl had studied harder she would have passed the exam’, and then how they understand counterpos…
Inference and Imagination
Our ability to imagine alternatives to reality is central to everyday cognition. Our competence in reasoning depends not only on our capacity to envisage the relevant facts, but also on our proficiency in simulating alternatives to them. I discuss how our skill in making deductive inferences depends on imagining possibilities. To illustrate, I consider evidence on the suppression of inferences, the cognitive processes based on mental models that …
On the different content of counterfactual and causal explanations
We report the results of five experiments that identify situations in which counterfactual and causal explanations contain the same or different content. For stories about an exceptional event, participants focused on the exceptional event when they created counterfactual explanations but not as often when they created causal explanations in Experiment 1. For stories about a controllable choice, they referred to the controllable choice when they …
Counterfactual thinking (7 works) · Cognition (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (5 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (4 works) · Mental representation (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (3 works)