There Can be a Syntax of Thought Related to Logical Forms

Abstract

Nowadays, a very important theory, the mental models theory, is demonstrating that it is able to explain most of the results in reasoning experiments reported by the cognitive science literature. However, this has a consequence. The mental models theory is mainly focused on content and meaning, and its theses can lead to reject the idea that syntax plays a role in the human mind and that reasoning is logical. But, in this paper, I try to show that it is possible to accept the basic framework of the mental models theory and, at the same time, to continue to claim that there are syntactic and formal logical processes coherent with the way our mind works. To do that, I argue that, even accepting that the mental models theory describes correctly the processes why certain combinations of possibilities are detected, it can be stated that the relationships between such combinations indicated by the theory are consistent with, for example, the modal axiomatic system K.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2017.v8n1p270