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{
    "pk": 49316,
    "title": "Making Sense of Nonsense",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "Some impossible things are more impossible than others. Magically levitating a feather seems easier than levitating a rock, even though both are impossible in the real world. But within the things that are inconceivable---e.g., \"the number 13 writing a play\" or \"a girl being a prime number\"---are some things more inconceivable than others? We first established that people have graded, systematic judgements of the likelihood of inconceivable and nonsense sentences (Experiment 1). We then examined two hypotheses as to how people make such judgments: the ease of a metaphorical interpretation (Experiment 2), and how difficult it is to transform a nonsense statement into a sensible one, as measured by distance in a type hierarchy (Experiment 3). We found that graded judgments of inconceivability are not captured by metaphorizability, but do correspond to a measure of distance in a type hierarchy. Our results suggest that inconceivability is graded, and the perceived likelihood of an inconceivable event may be a product of one's ontology of the world.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Philosophy; Psychology; Concepts and categories; Event cognition; Reasoning; Representation"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers with Oral Presentation",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dw018f7",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Jennifer",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Hu",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Harvard University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Felix",
            "middle_name": "Anthony",
            "last_name": "Sosa",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Harvard University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Tomer D.",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Ullman",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Harvard University",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2025-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49316/galley/37277/download/"
        }
    ]
}