ABSTRACT

David E. Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the ‘new paradigm’ in the psychology of human reasoning.

Over’s signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of researchers, psychologists, and philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over’s ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics—such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems—as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David E. Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning.

This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over’s thought already.

chapter 1|9 pages

The contribution of David E. Over

An intellectual biography

chapter 3|15 pages

Deduction from uncertain premises?

chapter 7|14 pages

Two systems for thinking with a community

Outsourcing versus collaboration

chapter 9|28 pages

Objecting to uncertain conditional sentences

A cross-linguistic study

chapter 12|15 pages

Relevance and conditionals

A synopsis of open pragmatic and semantic issues

chapter 13|20 pages

Correlation detection with and without the theories of conditionals

A model update of Hattori and Oaksford (2007)