A Comparative Interpretation Of The Connotation Of Inference Between Compound Sentences

In daily life,people often use conditionals and disjunctions.The propositional reasoning based on conditionals and disjunctions plays an important role in the process of acquiring and processing information.According to whether the conclusion of propositional reasoning is a compound proposition,propositional reasoning can be classified into intra-propositional reasoning and inter-propositional reasoning.In psychology,there are disputes about the theoretical interpretation and research of the inter-propositional reasoning,and the more controversial theory is the mental model theory.According to the mental model theory,the core meaning of a compound proposition is its reference,that is,the possibility of reference in a compound proposition.When the possibilities of the conclusion is equal to the possibilities of the premise,the conclusion can be deduced from the premise.Therefore,the explanation of the mental model theory on inter-propositional reasoning is essentially the comparative interpretation of the referential possibility for premise and conclusion.However,the mental model theory does not take into the influence of people's understanding and comparison of the syntactic meaning on inter-propositional reasoning.According to theoretical analysis and previous research,we proposed the comparative interpretation of the connotation of the compound proposition.This explanation holds that the primary meaning of a compound proposition is its connotation(that is,its syntactic meaning)rather than its referential possibility.Reasoning between two different compound sentences should be based on the connotation comparison of premise and conclusion.If the connotation of the conclusion belongs to or is equal to the connotation of the premise,the conclusion can be deduced from the premise;otherwise,the conclusion cannot be can be deduced from the premise.And that the inter-propositional reasoning is more likely to be based on the comparative interpretation of the syntactic meaning for premise and conclusion.In view of above-mentioned divergence,two experiments examined whether people's inter-propositional reasoning was based on the comparative interpretation of the syntactic meaning or on the comparative interpretation of the referential possibility.Experiment 1 investigated the inter-propositional reasoning under the condition that the syntactic types of premises and conclusions are the same but the possibilities of the premises and conclusions are different.The between-subjects factor was the type of task,which had three tasks:the factual judgment task,the possibility judgment and factual judgment task,the probability judgment and factual judgment task.The within-subjects factor was the relationship between the possibility contained in conclusion and the possibility contained in premise,which was divided into two conditions:the possibility contained in conclusion is the part of the possibility contained in premise and the possibility contained in conclusion exceeds the possibility contained in premise.Results showed that people's inter-propositional reasoning was consistent with the understanding and comparison of the syntactic meaning of premises and conclusions,and was inconsistent with whether the possibilities of premises and conclusions are equal.At the same time,there were significant differences between the group of the probability judgment and factual judgment task and the group of the factual judgment task,which indicated that the probability response of the previous possibility judgment task inhibited the decisive response of the inter-propositional reasoning.There was no obvious difference between the group of the possibility judgment and factual judgment task and the group of the factual judgment task,which indicated that people's inter-propositional reasoning was not affected by the probability judgment task.The results were consistent with our prediction and were not consistent with the prediction of the mental model and the probabilistic logic.Experiment 2 investigated the inter-propositional reasoning under the condition that the syntactic types of premises and conclusions are different and the possibilities are the same.The between-subjects factor was the type of task,which had three tasks:the factual judgment task,the probability judgment and factual judgment task,the possibility judgment and factual judgment task.The within-subjects factor was the direction of the reasoning,which had two conditions:the conditional follows from the corresponding disjunction vs the disjunction follows from the corresponding conditional.Results showed that the people's inter-propositional reasoning judgment tendency was independent of the comparison of the possibilities of the premise and the conclusion,and was consistent with the prediction of the comparative interpretation of the syntactic meaning on the different direction of reasoning.At the same time,comparing to the group of the factual judgment task,the probability judgment task and the possibility judgment task had no effect on the subsequent inter-propositional reasoning.The results were consistent with our prediction and were not consistent with the prediction of the mental model and the probabilistic logic.In conclusion,this study showed that people's inter-propositional reasoning tended to be based on the comparative interpretation of the connotation of conclusion and premise,rather than the comparative interpretation of the possibilities of conclusion and premise.The results of this study supported the proposed comparative interpretation of the connotation rather than the existing theoretical explanations.