Conditionals: A Theory of Meaning, Pragmatics, and Inference

@article{JohnsonLaird2002ConditionalsAT,
  title={Conditionals: A Theory of Meaning, Pragmatics, and Inference},
  author={Philip N. Johnson-Laird and Ruth M. J. Byrne},
  journal={Psychological Review},
  year={2002},
  volume={109},
  pages={646-678}
}
You reason about conditional relations because much of your knowledge is conditional. If you get caught speeding, then you pay a fine. If you have an operation, then you need time to recuperate. If you have money in the bank, then you can cash a check. Conditional reasoning is a central part of thinking, yet people do not always reason correctly. The lawyer Jan Schlictmann in a celebrated trial (see Harr, 1995, pp. 361–362) elicited the following information from an expert witness about the… 
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The mental model theory of free choice permissions and paradoxical disjunctive inferences
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Specificity effects in reasoning with counterintuitive and arbitrary conditionals
TLDR
This work varied the specificity of counterintuitive conditionals, which described the opposite of what is expected according to everyday experiences and gave higher acceptance ratings for specific than for unspecific conditionals.
The Puzzle of Conditionals with True Clauses: Against the Gricean Account
TLDR
An experimental study investigating how the presence or absence of a connection between the clauses affects the assertability of conditionals and conjunction expressing generic and specific kind of content refutes the standard pragmatic explanation.
A Priori True and False Conditionals.
TLDR
Three experiments corroborated the model theory that certain conditionals should be true or false without the need for evidence and considered the implications for theories of reasoning based on logic, probabilistic logic, and suppositions.
The Relation Between Factual and Counterfactual Conditionals
TLDR
Two experiments supported the theory of mental models and its computer implementation that both can have a priori truth values and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for counterfactual conditionals.
Reasoning with Exceptive Conditionals: The case of ‘Except If’
In this paper we outline a mental model theory (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991, 2002) of reasoning about the conditional except if. We report two experiments showing that the exceptive conditional…
Counterfactual ‘only if ’ conditionals
People understand a conditional, 'if A then B', such as 'if Peg went swimming then she felt well' by keeping in mind only true possibilities, e.g., A and B, not-A and not-B, not-A and B…
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References

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