Reading Questions for 10/22/99 class on Induction

The Smith et al. paper is an overview "big picture" paper. The other two are examples of recent empirical research on induction.

1. What is induction? How does it differ from deduction?

Smith et al. "The case for rules in reasoning"

2. Why do Smith et al. think that (all) reasoning is rule-based? Which of the reasoning rules that they discuss are inductive rules-- that is, rules that can be used to make inductive inferences? What role does induction play in the formation of reasoning rules?

Schwartz & Black "Shuttling between depictive models and abstract rule: Induction and fallback"

3. When people reason and make predictions about a physical system (such as gears), what cognitive processing occurs? What role does induction play in this processing? What rules do subject induce, and how do they induce them?

Heit & Rubenstein "Similarity and property effects in inductive reasoning"

4. How and when to people generalize characteristics of one instance (or category) to a second instance (or category)? What guides these inductive inferences? Are they rule-based?