How we reason

"Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes - so much of our mental life goes on outside our awareness. In recent years huge strides have been made into developing a scientific understanding of reasoning. This new book by one of the pioneers of the field, Philip Johnson-Laird, looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. We can all reason from our childhood onwards--but how? How we reason presents a bold approach to understanding reasoning. According to this approach, we don't rely on the laws of logic or probability--we reason by thinking about what's possible, we reason by seeing what is common to the possibilities. As the book shows, this approach can answer many questions about how we reason, and what causes mistakes in our reasoning that can lead to disasters such as Chernobyl. It shows why our irrational fears may become psychological illnesses, why terrorists develop 'crazy' ideologies, and how we can act in order to improve our reasoning. The book ends by looking at the role of reasoning in three extraordinary case histories: the Wright brothers' use of analogies in inventing their flyer, the cryptanalysts' deductions in breaking the Germans' Enigma code in World War II, and Dr. John Snow's inductive reasoning in discovering how cholera spread from one person to another. How we reason provides an accessible account of the science behind one of the most intriguing facets of being human."--

Pt. I. The world in our conscious minds. Icons and images ; Models of possibilities: from conjuring tricks to disasters. -- Pt. II. The world in our unconscious minds. Mental architecture and the unconscious ; Intuitions and unconscious reasoning ; Emotions as inferences ; Reasoning in psychological illnesses. -- Pt. III. How we make deductions. Only connections ; I'm my own grandpa: reasoning about identities and other relations ; Syllogisms and reasoning about properties ; Isn't everyone an optimist? The case of complex reasoning. -- Pt. IV. How we make inductions. Modulation: a step towards induction ; Knowledge and inductions ; Sherlock Holmes's method: Abduction. -- The balance of probabilities.

Pt. V. What makes us rational. Counterexamples ; Truths, lies, and the higher reasoning. -- Pt. VI. How we develop our ability to reason. Our development ; Strategies and cultures ; How we can improve our reasoning. -- Pt. VII. Knowledge, beliefs, and problems. The puzzles of If ; Causes and obligations ; Beliefs, heresies, and changes in mind ; How we solve problems. -- Pt. VIII. Expert reasoning in technology, logic, and science. Flying bicycles: how the Wright Brothers invented th…