Philip N Johnson-Laird
Biographic Data
| ID | 747044 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philip N Johnson-Laird |
| GIVEN NAMES | Philip N |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnson-Laird |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSON-LAIRD P N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4461-1324 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 187 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Reasoning about possibilities: Modal logics, possible worlds, and mental models
Everyone reasons about possibilities. This article explains how they could do so using mental models. The theory makes four major claims: 1. Correct inferences are necessary, referring only to facts or possibilities to which the premises refer and not ruling any of them out, for example: She left or hid ; Therefore, it’s possible that she left and possible that she hid . 2. A possibility such as that she hid, which is represented in an intuitive …
Kahneman, Tversky, and Kahneman-Tversky: Three ways of thinking
This homage to Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky describes how each of them thought about psychology. It outlines the principal results of their collaborative research, which was their most original and most influential. Why? In search of an explanation it examines their joint thinking during their collaboration
What happened to the “new paradigm”? Commentary on Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda (2023)
Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda (this issue) critique the "new paradigm" – a framework that replaces logic with probabilities – on the grounds that there existed no "old” paradigm for it to supplant. Their position is supported by the large numbers of theories that theorists developed to explain the Wason selection task, syllogisms, and other tasks. We propose some measures to inhibit such facile theorizing, which threatens the viability of cognitive …
Recursion in programs, thought, and language
The probability of conditionals: A review
How poetry evokes emotions
Poetry evokes emotions. It does so, according to the theory we present, from three sorts of simulation. They each can prompt emotions, which are communications both within the brain and among people. First, models of a poem's semantic contents can evoke emotions as do models that occur in depictions of all kinds, from novels to perceptions. Second, mimetic simulations of prosodic cues, such as meter, rhythm, and rhyme, yield particular emotional …
Reasoning about epistemic possibilities
Beliefs and emotions about social conventions
On selecting evidence to test hypotheses: A theory of selection tasks
How individuals choose evidence to test hypotheses is a long-standing puzzle. According to an algorithmic theory that we present, it is based on dual processes: individuals' intuitions depending on mental models of the hypothesis yield selections of evidence matching instances of the hypothesis, but their deliberations yield selections of potential counterexamples to the hypothesis. The results of 228 experiments using Wason's selection task corr…
Problem Solving and Reasoning, Psychology of
Theories of the syllogism: A meta-analysis
Syllogisms are arguments about the properties of entities. They consist of 2 premises and a conclusion, which can each be in 1 of 4 "moods": All A are B, Some A are B, No A are B, and Some A are not B. Their logical analysis began with Aristotle, and their psychological investigation began over 100 years ago. This article outlines the logic of inferences about syllogisms, which includes the evaluation of the consistency of sets of assertions. It …
Negation: A theory of its meaning, representation, and use
This article presents a model-based theory of what negation means, how it is mentally represented, and how it is understood. The theory postulates that negation takes a single argument that refers to a set of possibilities and returns the complement of that set. Individuals therefore tend to assign a small scope to negation in order to minimize the number of models of possibilities that they have to consider. Individuals untrained in logic do not…
Against Logical Form
An old view in logic going back to Aristotle is that an inference is valid in virtue of its logical form. Many psychologists have adopted the same point of view about human reasoning: the first step is to recover the logical form of an inference, and the second step is to apply rules of inference that match these forms in order to prove that the conclusion follows from the premises. The present paper argues against this idea. The logical form of …
Flying bicycles: How the Wright brothers invented the airplane
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…
Strategies in Syllogistic Reasoning
This paper is about syllogistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning from such pairs of premises as, All the chefs are musicians; some of the musicians are painters. We present a computer model that implements the latest account of syllogisms, which is based on the theory of mental models. We also report four experiments that were designed to test this account. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the strategies revealed by the participants' use of paper and penci…
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
Answering the question of whether there are basic emotions requires considering the functions of emotions. We propose that just a few emotions are basic and that they have functions in managing action. When no fully rational solution is available for a problem of action, a basic emotion functions to prompt us in a direction that is better than a random choice. We contrast this kind of theory with a componential approach which we argue is either a…
The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science
Cognitive science brings together psychology, computing, linguistics, anthropology, artificial intelligence, neurophysiology and philosophy. This book addresses the central questions of cognitive science: how does the mind work, and what is it that enables us to have thoughts, or feelings? The book shows that the mind depends on a brain in th same way that the execution of a programme depends on a computer. It describes its origins, and outlines …
The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field
This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding t…
Towards a Cognitive Theory of Emotions
A theory is proposed that emotions are cognitively based states which co-ordinate quasi-autonomous processes in the nervous system. Emotions provide a biological solution to certain problems of transition between plans, in systems with multiple goals. Their function is to accomplish and maintain these transitions, and to communicate them to ourselves and others. Transitions occur at significant junctures of plans when the evaluation of success in…
Plausibility and the comprehension of text
Implausible versions of stories were constructed by a panel of judges who filled in sentence frames from the originals from which all but the referring phrases had been deleted. In one condition each judge completed a sentence frame independently, resulting in a highly implausible story; in another condition each judge saw the two previous completed sentence frames before filling in a sentence frame, resulting in a mildly implausible story. Both …
Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness
Excerpts available on Google Books
Only connections: A critique of semantic networks
Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science
Mental Models in Cognitive Science
The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field
This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding t…
Mental Models in Cognitive Science
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
Answering the question of whether there are basic emotions requires considering the functions of emotions. We propose that just a few emotions are basic and that they have functions in managing action. When no fully rational solution is available for a problem of action, a basic emotion functions to prompt us in a direction that is better than a random choice. We contrast this kind of theory with a componential approach which we argue is either a…
Reasoning and a Sense of Reality
An experiment was performed to determine whether the use of realistic materials would improve performance in a deceptive reasoning problem. The task involved selecting from a set of envelopes those which, if they were turned over, could violate a given rule. The rule concerned either a realistic relation ('if a letter is sealed, then it has a 50 lire stamp on it') or else an arbitrary relation between symbols ('if a letter has an A on one side, t…
Negation: A theory of its meaning, representation, and use
This article presents a model-based theory of what negation means, how it is mentally represented, and how it is understood. The theory postulates that negation takes a single argument that refers to a set of possibilities and returns the complement of that set. Individuals therefore tend to assign a small scope to negation in order to minimize the number of models of possibilities that they have to consider. Individuals untrained in logic do not…
On selecting evidence to test hypotheses: A theory of selection tasks
How individuals choose evidence to test hypotheses is a long-standing puzzle. According to an algorithmic theory that we present, it is based on dual processes: individuals' intuitions depending on mental models of the hypothesis yield selections of evidence matching instances of the hypothesis, but their deliberations yield selections of potential counterexamples to the hypothesis. The results of 228 experiments using Wason's selection task corr…
The Choice of the Passive Voice in a Communicative Task
Subjects had to rank-order four logically equivalent but syntactically different sentences in terms of their appropriateness as descriptions of one diagram in contrast to another. A prediction of this rank order was derived on the assumption that subjects would attempt to emphasize the larger areas of colour in the stimuli, and that passive sentences emphasize the logical object to a greater extent than active sentences. Four groups were run in a…
Plausibility and the comprehension of text
Implausible versions of stories were constructed by a panel of judges who filled in sentence frames from the originals from which all but the referring phrases had been deleted. In one condition each judge completed a sentence frame independently, resulting in a highly implausible story; in another condition each judge saw the two previous completed sentence frames before filling in a sentence frame, resulting in a mildly implausible story. Both …
Strategies in Syllogistic Reasoning
This paper is about syllogistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning from such pairs of premises as, All the chefs are musicians; some of the musicians are painters. We present a computer model that implements the latest account of syllogisms, which is based on the theory of mental models. We also report four experiments that were designed to test this account. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the strategies revealed by the participants' use of paper and penci…
Katz on analyticity
Katz (1966) attempts to explicate the notion of analyticity on the basis of a theory of natural languages. This theory assumes that grammatical transformations do not affect semantic interpretations, which are performed on the underlying phrase markers. Hence, the interpretation of the conjunction of two co-ordinate clauses consists of the logical conjunction of their interpretations. The following two sentences have therefore identical interpret…
Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness
Excerpts available on Google Books
A Conflict Between Selecting and Evaluating Information in an Inferential Task
An inferential task was investigated in which the subjects had to select which of four cards they needed to inspect in order to determine whether a rule was true or false. In one condition crucial information was concealed on the other side of the cards, and in another condition it was on the same side of the cards, but covered by a mask. A previous experiment suggested that subjects sometimes confused the notion of ‘the other side of the card’. …
Katz on analyticity
Katz (1966) attempts to explicate the notion of analyticity on the basis of a theory of natural languages. This theory assumes that grammatical transformations do not affect semantic interpretations, which are performed on the underlying phrase markers. Hence, the interpretation of the conjunction of two co-ordinate clauses consists of the logical conjunction of their interpretations. The following two sentences have therefore identical interpret…
The Choice of the Passive Voice in a Communicative Task
Subjects had to rank-order four logically equivalent but syntactically different sentences in terms of their appropriateness as descriptions of one diagram in contrast to another. A prediction of this rank order was derived on the assumption that subjects would attempt to emphasize the larger areas of colour in the stimuli, and that passive sentences emphasize the logical object to a greater extent than active sentences. Four groups were run in a…
A Conflict Between Selecting and Evaluating Information in an Inferential Task
An inferential task was investigated in which the subjects had to select which of four cards they needed to inspect in order to determine whether a rule was true or false. In one condition crucial information was concealed on the other side of the cards, and in another condition it was on the same side of the cards, but covered by a mask. A previous experiment suggested that subjects sometimes confused the notion of ‘the other side of the card’. …
Reasoning and a Sense of Reality
An experiment was performed to determine whether the use of realistic materials would improve performance in a deceptive reasoning problem. The task involved selecting from a set of envelopes those which, if they were turned over, could violate a given rule. The rule concerned either a realistic relation ('if a letter is sealed, then it has a 50 lire stamp on it') or else an arbitrary relation between symbols ('if a letter has an A on one side, t…
Representation of spatial descriptions in working memory
Two experiments examined subjects’ ability to make drawings of spatial layouts based on verbal descriptions. There were two sorts of descriptions that depended solely on the order of the sentences within them: (1) referentially continuous descriptions that can be immediately integrated into a unified representation, and (2) referentially discontinuous descriptions that cannot, because their second sentence makes no reference to what has gone befo…
Language and Perception
Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science
Mental Models in Cognitive Science
Only connections: A critique of semantic networks
Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness
Excerpts available on Google Books
Plausibility and the comprehension of text
Implausible versions of stories were constructed by a panel of judges who filled in sentence frames from the originals from which all but the referring phrases had been deleted. In one condition each judge completed a sentence frame independently, resulting in a highly implausible story; in another condition each judge saw the two previous completed sentence frames before filling in a sentence frame, resulting in a mildly implausible story. Both …
Towards a Cognitive Theory of Emotions
A theory is proposed that emotions are cognitively based states which co-ordinate quasi-autonomous processes in the nervous system. Emotions provide a biological solution to certain problems of transition between plans, in systems with multiple goals. Their function is to accomplish and maintain these transitions, and to communicate them to ourselves and others. Transitions occur at significant junctures of plans when the evaluation of success in…
The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science
Cognitive science brings together psychology, computing, linguistics, anthropology, artificial intelligence, neurophysiology and philosophy. This book addresses the central questions of cognitive science: how does the mind work, and what is it that enables us to have thoughts, or feelings? The book shows that the mind depends on a brain in th same way that the execution of a programme depends on a computer. It describes its origins, and outlines …
The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field
This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding t…
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
Answering the question of whether there are basic emotions requires considering the functions of emotions. We propose that just a few emotions are basic and that they have functions in managing action. When no fully rational solution is available for a problem of action, a basic emotion functions to prompt us in a direction that is better than a random choice. We contrast this kind of theory with a componential approach which we argue is either a…
Strategies in Syllogistic Reasoning
This paper is about syllogistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning from such pairs of premises as, All the chefs are musicians; some of the musicians are painters. We present a computer model that implements the latest account of syllogisms, which is based on the theory of mental models. We also report four experiments that were designed to test this account. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the strategies revealed by the participants' use of paper and penci…
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…
Flying bicycles: How the Wright brothers invented the airplane
Against Logical Form
An old view in logic going back to Aristotle is that an inference is valid in virtue of its logical form. Many psychologists have adopted the same point of view about human reasoning: the first step is to recover the logical form of an inference, and the second step is to apply rules of inference that match these forms in order to prove that the conclusion follows from the premises. The present paper argues against this idea. The logical form of …
Theories of the syllogism: A meta-analysis
Syllogisms are arguments about the properties of entities. They consist of 2 premises and a conclusion, which can each be in 1 of 4 "moods": All A are B, Some A are B, No A are B, and Some A are not B. Their logical analysis began with Aristotle, and their psychological investigation began over 100 years ago. This article outlines the logic of inferences about syllogisms, which includes the evaluation of the consistency of sets of assertions. It …
Negation: A theory of its meaning, representation, and use
This article presents a model-based theory of what negation means, how it is mentally represented, and how it is understood. The theory postulates that negation takes a single argument that refers to a set of possibilities and returns the complement of that set. Individuals therefore tend to assign a small scope to negation in order to minimize the number of models of possibilities that they have to consider. Individuals untrained in logic do not…
Problem Solving and Reasoning, Psychology of
On selecting evidence to test hypotheses: A theory of selection tasks
How individuals choose evidence to test hypotheses is a long-standing puzzle. According to an algorithmic theory that we present, it is based on dual processes: individuals' intuitions depending on mental models of the hypothesis yield selections of evidence matching instances of the hypothesis, but their deliberations yield selections of potential counterexamples to the hypothesis. The results of 228 experiments using Wason's selection task corr…
Reasoning about epistemic possibilities
Beliefs and emotions about social conventions
Psychology (24 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Cognitive psychology (17 works) · Cognitive science (13 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Artificial Intelligence (8 works) · Artificial Intelligence (7 works) · Cognition (7 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (7 works)