ABSTRACT
A considerable body of research has attempted to determine the nature of reasoning processes. Two major and opposing schools of thought have emerged. Rule-based theories (e.g., Braine & O’Brien, 1998; Rips, 1994) suggest that individuals possess an inherent mental logic. Reasoning involves transducing premises into an abstract logical form (based on the syntactic structure of a given problem) and applying formal deduction rules to generate a new proposition. This is then converted into a conclusion appropriate for the task. As such, errors can be accounted for by the number and complexity of rules required.
