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Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Exploring the Role of Deontic Reasoning and World Knowledge in Wason´s Selection Task
Published on: July 22, 2025
Ranking Theory and Conditional Reasoning
1Philosophy Department, University of Konstanz.
Abstract:
Ranking theory is a formal epistemology that has been developed in over 600 pages in Spohn's recent book The Laws of Belief, which aims to provide a normative account of the dynamics of beliefs that presents an alternative to current probabilistic approaches. It has long been received in the AI community, but it has not yet found application in experimental psychology. The purpose of this paper is to derive clear, quantitative predictions by exploiting a parallel between ranking theory and a statistical model called logistic regression. This approach is illustrated by the development of a model for the conditional inference task using Spohn's (2013) ranking theoretic approach to conditionals.
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