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How our brains reason logically

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Abstract

The aim of this article is to strengthen links between cognitive brain research and formal logic. The work covers three fundamental sorts of logical inferences: reasoning in the propositional calculus, i.e. inferences with the conditional “if...then”, reasoning in the predicate calculus, i.e. inferences based on quantifiers such as “all”, “some”, “none”, and reasoning with n-place relations. Studies with brain-damaged patients and neuroimaging experiments indicate that such logical inferences are implemented in overlapping but different bilateral cortical networks, including parts of the fronto-temporal cortex, the posterior parietal cortex, and the visual cortices. I argue that these findings show that we do not use a single deterministic strategy for solving logical reasoning problems. This account resolves many disputes about how humans reason logically and why we sometimes deviate from the norms of formal logic.

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Notes

  1. Aplysia is a marine snail about five inches long, which has been more extensively dissected than any other animal by biopsychologists and biologists to study the principles of learning and memory.

  2. A detailed discussion on how many syllogisms must be distinguished from a cognitive point of view can be found in Garnham and Oakhill (1994, Chapter 6). Currently, most research follows the suggestion to distinguish between 27 syllogisms (Johnson-Laird 1983).

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Acknowledgements

I am very thankful to Johan van Benthem, Wilfrid Hodges, Marian Counihan, and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful und insightful comments and suggestions. I am also thankful to the German National Research Foundation (DFG) for supporting my work by a Heisenberg Award.

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  1. Experimental Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10F, 35394, Giessen, Germany

    Markus Knauff

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Knauff, M. How our brains reason logically. Topoi 26, 19–36 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-006-9002-8

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