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Reasoning Without Words
Friday, Oct 30, 2009
4:00-5:00pm, W401 PBB (Pappajohn Business Building)
Abstract
The idea that reasoning is a singular accomplishment of the human species
has an ancient pedigree. Yet this idea remains as controversial as it is
ancient. Those who would deny reasoning to nonhuman animals typically hold a
language-based conception of inference which places it beyond the reach of
languageless creatures. Others reject such an anthropocentric conception of
reasoning on the basis of similar performance by humans and animals in some
reasoning tasks, such as transitive inference. Here, building on the Modal
Similarity Theory of Vigo (2008), I offer an account in which reasoning
depends on a core suite of subsymbolic processes for similarity assessment,
discrimination, and categorization and I will argue that premise-based
inference operates through these subsymbolic processes, even in humans.
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