Justified Belief

What a marvellous blog (long and luxurious) of which this is a perfect example.

http://justifiedbelief.com/2013/10/15/hypothetical-reasoning-disjunctive-inference/

The answer, by the way is to recognise ‘contrivance’. The question is logical, designed to get you reasoning, but it is abstracted from lived experience. In other words, they are setting you up to think “front brain” rationally for a decision that in the real world you’d leave to your “back brain”. The clue is “married” which is a contrivance, so get the thinker to draw the question, to situate it, with a little plan of Jack looking at Ann looking at George and the logic is not required. The thinker sees the lived experience and says, yes. Even better, change the word ‘married’ for the word ‘kissable’ (being overtly polite) and nobody thinks anything, the answer is yes. Because in the real world, being able to identify a possible mate, is important “back brain” and whether they are married is irrelevant (contrivance).

To make these sort of judgements well, they have to be situated (immersed in a real place and time) phenomenological perhaps, if you believe in that sort of thing. I love cognitive science and this is a great example of the perpetual psychological experiment, there is only one, to prove that human cognition is as incredibly sophisticated as it is delicate.

Clever but gullible! 😄