Reasoning about intentions: counterexamples to reasons for actions.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Logic
• Reasoning

Background:

• Understanding how people reason with conditional statements is crucial in cognitive psychology.
• Intention conditionals, which link actions to intentions, present unique reasoning challenges.
• Previous research has explored logical inferences but less on the role of counterexamples in intention-based reasoning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether people differentiate between types of intention conditionals (biconditional, conditional, enabling) by considering counterexamples.
• To examine the influence of alternative and disabling reasons on logical inferences derived from intention conditionals.
• To determine if these reasoning patterns generalize across different types of reasons and content familiarity.

Main Methods:

• Four experiments were conducted using a corpus of intention conditionals based on beliefs, goals, obligations, and social norms.
• Participants were presented with conditional intentions and asked to make inferences, with alternative or disabling reasons sometimes provided.
• Inference patterns were analyzed to identify suppression effects based on retrieved or provided counterexamples.

Main Results:

• Retrieved alternative reasons suppressed affirmation of the consequent and denial of the antecedent inferences for conditional intentions.
• Retrieved disabling reasons suppressed modus ponens and modus tollens inferences for enabling intentions.
• These suppression effects were observed consistently across explicitly provided counterexamples, unfamiliar content, and intention conditionals, mirroring patterns seen in causal conditionals.

Conclusions:

• People actively use counterexamples (alternatives and disablers) to distinguish between different types of intention conditionals.
• Reasoning with intention conditionals is sensitive to the presence of potential counterexamples, influencing logical inference patterns.
• The findings support a counterexample-based account of conditional reasoning and have implications for probability-based theories.