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Is reasoning from counterfactual antecedents evidence for counterfactual reasoning?
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Rafetseder, Eva Perner, Josef |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Description | In most developmental studies the only error children could make on counterfactual tasks was to answer with the current state of affairs. It was concluded that children who did not show this error are able to reason counterfactually. However, children might have avoided this error by using basic conditional reasoning (Rafetseder, Cristi-Vargas, & Perner, 2010 Perner, J. and Rafetseder, E. 2010. “Counterfactual and other forms of conditional reasoning: Children lost in the nearest possible world”. In Understanding counterfactuals/Understanding causation, Edited by: Hoerl, C. , McCormack, T. and Beck, S. R. New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] ). Basic conditional reasoning takes background assumptions represented as conditionals about how the world works. If an antecedent of one of these conditionals is provided by the task, then a likely conclusion can be inferred based only on background assumptions. A critical feature of counterfactual reasoning is that the selection of these additional assumptions is constrained by actual events to which the counterfactual is taken to be counterfactual. In contrast, in basic conditional reasoning one enriches the given antecedent with any plausible assumptions, unconstrained by actual events. In our tasks basic conditional reasoning leads to different answers from counterfactual reasoning. For instance, a doctor, sitting in the park with the intention of reading a paper, is called to an emergency at the swimming pool. The question, “If there had been no emergency, where would the doctor be?” should counterfactually be answered “in the park”. But by ignoring the doctor's intentions, and just reasoning from premises about the default location of a hospital doctor who has not been called out to an emergency, one might answer: “in the hospital”. Only by 6 years of age did children mostly give correct answers. |
| Related Links | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3242030/pdf |
| Ending Page | 155 |
| Page Count | 25 |
| Starting Page | 131 |
| ISSN | 13546783 |
| e-ISSN | 14640708 |
| DOI | 10.1080/13546783.2010.488074 |
| Journal | Thinking & Reasoning |
| Issue Number | 2 |
| Volume Number | 16 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2010-05-17 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Journal: Thinking & Reasoning History and Philosophy of Science Counterfactual Reasoning Basic Conditional Reasoning Realist Error Developmental Psychology Children |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
| Subject | Philosophy Experimental and Cognitive Psychology |
