ABSTRACT
One of the oldest views about the nature of thought is that reasoning is guided by abstract rules of inference. This view has its origins in Plato's theories of reasoning and education, and was the rationale behind “formal discipline” approaches to education ranging from the medieval scholastics' teaching of the syllogism to the English “public school” curriculum of Latin and mathematics. In modern times, abstract inferential rules have played important roles in some of the most influential theories of cognition, including those of Newell and Simon (e.g., 1972) and Piaget and Inhelder (e.g., 1958). This blue-blood intellectual history notwithstanding, the role of abstract rules has recently come under attack from a variety of sources.
