‘If’ and the problems of conditional reasoning

@article{Byrne2009IfAT,
  title={‘If’ and the problems of conditional reasoning},
  author={Ruth M. J. Byrne and Philip N. Johnson-Laird},
  journal={Trends in Cognitive Sciences},
  year={2009},
  volume={13},
  pages={282-287}
}
'If' is a puzzle. No consensus has existed about its meaning for over two thousand years. Here, we show how the main psychological theories deal with the seven crucial problems that it raises. These competing explanations treat 'if' as though it was a term in a formal logic, or as eliciting the construction of a mental model of the world, or as an instruction to suppose that a proposition holds. The solution to 'if' would be a major step towards understanding how people reason, and towards… 
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References

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