Abstract

In his interesting paper, Duca argues that even though people don't apply a logical rule of inference – contraposition- when they try to solve the Wason task, they may be using another kind of formal strategy in terms of probabilistic relations between the antecedent and the consequent. It is suggested that there are two ways of intepreting this task – one logical and apriori, the other hypothetical and data driven. Taking a probabilistic interpretation of the conditional rule for subjects' card selections in the Wason task seems much more justified in this second reading. If this is true, new questions arise: how does a subject recognize which method is contextually appropriate, and what makes a solution contextually rational?