ABSTRACT
Philosophers have distinguished between two kinds of reasoning. One is inductive reasoning, which involves drawing general conclusion from premises referring to particular instances. The other kind of reasoning identified by philosophers from Aristotle onwards is deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is of little relevance to everyday life. Jonathan Evans' heuristic–analytic theory is based on the singularity, relevance and satisficing principles and attaches less importance than mental model theory to deductive reasoning. Neuroimaging studies of reasoning often produce apparently inconsistent findings. Each type of deductive reasoning problem produces its own pattern of brain activation. Informal reasoning involves use of the individual's knowledge and experience and the content of arguments and contextual factors are important. Human rationality is greater than appears to be the case on many thinking and reasoning tasks. Performance on the 2–4–6 task involves separable processes of hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing.
