Table Of ContentConditional Reasoning
Other Titles by Raymond S. Nickerson
The Teaching of Thinking (with David N. Perkins and Edward E. Smith)
Using Computers: Human Factors in Information Systems
Reflections on Reasoning
Looking Ahead: Human Factors Challenges in a Changing World
Psychology and Environmental Change
Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning
Aspects of Rationality: Reflections on What It Means to Be Rational
and Whether We Are
Mathematical Reasoning: Patterns, Problems, Conjectures, and Proofs
Conditional Reasoning
The Unruly Syntactics, Semantics, Thematics, and
Pragmatics of “If”
R S. n
aymond ickeRSon
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nickerson, Raymond S.
Conditional reasoning : The Unruly Syntactics, Semantics, Thematics and Pragmatics,
of “If” / Raymond S. Nickerson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–020299–6
1. Reasoning (Psychology) I. Title.
BF442.N53 2015
153.4′3—dc23
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Preface vii
1. Getting Started 1
2. Conditionals 5
3. Experimental Approaches to the Study of Conditional Reasoning 32
4. Logic and Conditional Reasoning 44
5. Syntactics, Semantics, Thematics, and Pragmatics in
Conditional Reasoning 87
6. Rule Checking 119
7. Counterfactual Thinking 1 133
8. Counterfactual Thinking 2 172
9. Conditional Reasoning as Probabilistic Reasoning 197
10. The Probability of the Conditional and the Conditional Probability 229
11. Individual Differences 259
12. Theoretical Accounts of Conditional Reasoning 271
13. More Theoretical Accounts 314
14. Final Comments 346
Appendices 355
References 363
Index 425
PREFACE
If there is such a thing as the biggest little word in English, if is surely a candidate
for that designation. It is a powerful word and central to a kind of reasoning that,
if not unique to human beings, is as indicative as any other capability of the type
of creatures we are. This book represents an effort to understand better this kind
of reasoning.
My interest in reasoning, or thinking more generally, goes as far back as I can
remember, and is reflected in several previous books. What drew me to the topic
of conditional reasoning in particular, I do not recall. What I do remember is being
surprised, as the writing progressed, by the complexity of the topic. As the book’s
title suggests, if turned out to be an unruly concept indeed. I believe that much
has been learned from the countless studies that have focused on conditional rea-
soning, and I hope that my abbreviated descriptions of many of them make this
clear. I believe too that much remains to be learned, and that a comprehensive
theory—normative or descriptive—of conditional reasoning that is compelling
to a majority of researchers has yet to emerge. If this book contributes in a positive
way to the numerous ongoing attempts to develop ever more robust theories of
conditional reasoning, or aspects thereof, it will have been worth the effort.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge support from a National Science Foundation
grant (0241739) when I starting working on the book and from a grant (N00014-
14-1-0529) from the Office of Naval Research while I was completing it. I am
grateful to several folks who read parts of the manuscript while it was in prepara-
tion, gave me pointers to relevant work, or otherwise contributed beneficially to
its production. These include Daniel Barch, Jonathan Baron, Jerome Busemeyer,
Susan Butler, Richard Chechile, Ruma Falk, Rob Goldstone, James Greeno, Philip
Johnson-Laird, Peter Killeen, and Nathan Nickerson. My interest in the topic has
been stimulated repeatedly by conversations with friends and colleagues, nota-
bly Sheldon Baron, Carl Feehrer, Thomas Landauer, Neville Moray, Richard Pew,
and Thomas Sheridan, among many others at BBN for 25 years, and at Tufts for
the last 22. I am grateful, too, beyond words, for the constant support of my wife,
Doris, for 61 years and counting.
Sad to say, Carl Feehrer and Tom Landauer passed away recently. Carl was a
classmate in graduate school at Tufts, a fellow BBNer, an occasional collaborator
viii PREFACE
on research, and a long-time neighbor. Extremely creative and versatile, with a
keen wit and sense of humor, and modest to a fault, he was known to colleagues as
the person you wanted on your team when something especially difficult had to
be done. To me, Carl was a special, and inspiring, friend for more than 50 years.
My interactions with Tom were sporadic, but numerous, and also covered the
better part of 50 years; they included serving together on various committees or
panels, editorial boards, and sundry other working groups. I invited him to partic-
ipate in a conference that eventuated in a book Technology in Education: Looking
toward 2020; he invited me to co-author (with him) the introductory chapter
to the Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd ed.), of which he was a
co-editor. We often communicated by e-mail, and I invariably learned something
of value from these exchanges. It was a singular honor to me to be invited to par-
ticipate in the festschrift for Lyle Bourne, Walter Kintsch, and Tom in 2003.
With great esteem for Carl’s and Tom’s creativity, admiration of their charac-
ter, a keen awareness of my good fortune to have known them both for such a long
time, and gratitude for their friendship, I dedicate this book to their memory. I
know they both would forgive me for the flaws it undoubtedly has, while not being
hesitant to point them out to me.
Conditional Reasoning
