An often used methodology for reasoning with probabilistic conditional knowledge bases is provided by the principle of maximum entropy (so-called MaxEnt principle) that realises an idea of informational economy. In this paper we exploit the fact that MaxEnt distributions can be computed by solving nonlinear equation systems that reflect the conditional logical structure of these distributions. ...

Representing and reasoning over different forms of preferences is of crucial importance to many different fields, especially where numerical comparisons need to be made between critical options. Focusing on the well-known Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method, we propose a two-layered framework for addressing different kinds of conditional preferences which include partial information ov...

This paper studies the connection between probabilistic conditional independence in un­ certain reasoning and data dependency in re­ lational databases. As a demonstration of the usefulness of this preliminary investigation, an alternate proof is presented for refuting the conjecture suggested by Pearl and Paz that probabilistic conditional independencies have a complete axiomatization.

Usually, default rules in the form of conditional statements are built on propositional logic, representing classes of individuals by propositional variables, as in “Birds fly, but penguins don’t”. Only few approaches have addressed the problem of giving formal semantics to first-order conditionals that allow (nonmonotonic) inferences both for classes and for individuals. In this paper, we pres...

Representing and reasoning over different forms of preferences is of crucial importance to many different fields, especially where numerical comparisons need to be made between critical options. Focusing on the well-known Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method, we propose a two-layered framework for addressing different kinds of conditional preferences which include partial information ov...

One of the main tenets of the mental model theory is that when individuals reason, they think about possibilities. According to this theory, reasoning on what is possible from the truth of a sentence would be psychologically basic, whereas reasoning the other way round, on the truth or falsity of a sentence from a given state of affairs, would require some meta-ability. The present study tested...

People demonstrate systematic logical failures when reasoning about conditional statements. In the Wason selection task, a test typically interpreted as a measure of abstract deductive reasoning, only about 10% of participants choose the cards prescribed by deductive logic. One possibility is that people are simply bad at hypothesis testing – biased toward confirming rather than falsifying abst...

Two interpretations about syllogistic statements are described in this paper. One is the so-called set-based interpretation, which assumes that quantified statements and syllogisms talk about quantity-relationships between sets. The other one, the so-called conditional interpretation, assumes that quantified propositions talk about conditional propositions and how strong are the links between t...

In a well known British case, the relatives of a dead man consented to the use of his organs for transplant on the condition that they were transplanted only into white people. The British government condemned the acceptance of racist offers and the panel they set up to report on the case condemned all conditional offers of donation. The panel appealed to a principle of altruism and meeting the...

Reasoning about social groups and their associated markers was investigated as a particular case of human reasoning about cue–category relationships. Assertions that reasoning involving cues (group markers) and associated categories (social groups) elicits specific probabilistic assumptions are supported by the results of three experiments. This phenomenon remains intact across the use of categ...