Why Do We Make Mistakes in our Reasoning. Johnson-Laird's Theory of Mental Models

• Authors: Krzysztof A. Wieczorek

Title variants

PL

Dlaczego wnioskujemy niepoprawnie. Teoria modeli mentalnych P. N. Johnsona-Lairda

EN

Why Do We Make Mistakes in our Reasoning. Johnson-Laird's Theory of Mental Models

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

In the article we are trying to answer the question why people make mistakes in their reasoning. According to the theory proposed by P. N. Johnson-Laird, reasoning is a semantic process based on mental models. Reasoners build models of the situations described in premises and then check which conclusion holds in all the models. Unfortunately, our working memory has a limited processing capacity, and so we often fail to represent all possibilities necessary to draw a valid conclusion. The more models we have to build, the higher the chance of making a mistake. Due to limitations of our working memory, we tend to represent in the models only what is true, but not what is false. One of the consequences of this fact is the occurrence of certain illusions: inferences that are compelling but invalid. The existence of such illusionary inferences have been corroborated by numerous experiments.

• Publisher: University of Warsaw, Institute of Philosophy
• Journal: Filozofia Nauki
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 111-134

Dates

published

2007-12-01

Contributors

author

Krzysztof A. Wieczorek