{"pk":28475,"title":"A New Probabilistic Explanation of the Modus Ponens–Modus Tollens Asymmetry","subtitle":null,"abstract":"A consistent finding in research on conditional reasoning isthat individuals are more likely to endorse the valid modus po-nens (MP) inference than the equally valid modus tollens (MT)inference. This pattern holds for both abstract task and prob-abilistic task. The existing explanation for this phenomenonwithin a Bayesian framework (e.g., Oaksford & Chater, 2008)accounts for this asymmetry by assuming separate probabil-ity distributions for both MP and MT. We propose a novelexplanation within a computational-level Bayesian account ofreasoning according to which “argumentation is learning”.We show that the asymmetry must appear for certain priorprobability distributions, under the assumption that the condi-tional inference provides the agent with new information thatis integrated into the existing knowledge by minimizing theKullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior and priorprobability distribution. We also show under which conditionswe would expect the opposite pattern, an MT-MP asymmetry.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"conditional reasoning; probabilistic reasoning;Bayesian model; computational-level account"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0775b50h","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Benjamin","middle_name":"","last_name":"Eva","name_suffix":"","institution":"Univeristy of Konstanz","department":""},{"first_name":"Stephan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hartmann","name_suffix":"","institution":"LMU Munich","department":""},{"first_name":"Henrik","middle_name":"","last_name":"Singmann","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Warwick","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28475/galley/18346/download/"}]}