Severity of Test (SoT) is an alternative to Popper's logical falsification that solves a number of problems of the logical view. It was presented by Popper himself in 1963. SoT is a less sophisticated probabilistic model of hypothesis testing than Oaksford & Chater's (O&C's) information gain model, but it has a number of striking similarities. Moreover, it captures the intuition of everyday hypothesis testing.

Human cognition requires coping with a complex and uncertain world. This suggests that dealing with uncertainty may be the central challenge for human reasoning. In Bayesian Rationality we argue that probability theory, the calculus of uncertainty, is the right framework in which to understand everyday reasoning. We also argue that probability theory explains behavior, even on experimental tasks that have been designed to probe people's logical reasoning abilities. Most commentators agree on the centrality of uncertainty; some suggest that there is (...) a residual role for logic in understanding reasoning; and others put forward alternative formalisms for uncertain reasoning, or raise specific technical, methodological, or empirical challenges. In responding to these points, we aim to clarify the scope and limits of probability and logic in cognitive science; explore the meaning of the explanation of cognition; and re-evaluate the empirical case for Bayesian rationality. (shrink)

(2013). Evolutionary modules and Bayesian facilitation: The role of general cognitive resources. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 27-53. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.713177.

We address the way verb-based and rule-content knowledge are combined in understanding institutional deontics. Study 1 showed that the institutional regulations used in our studies were readily categorised into one of two content groups: rights or duties. Participants perceived rights as benefiting the addressees identified by the rule, whereas they perceived duties as benefiting the collective that imposed the rule. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that rule content had clear effects on perceptions of violations and relevance of cases for (...) explaining the rule, even when controlling for deontic verb, phrasing of the action permitted by a right, or the formality of the deontic verb. These effects are incompatible with a simple pragmatic disambiguation approach to pragmatic modulation, as they often induce permissibility judgments that contradict the core semantic meanings of the deontic verbs. Other ways of reconciling verb meaning with rule content should be considered in a fuller the.. (shrink)