Characterization of reasoning in terms of perceptual simulation

Abstract

Although characterizing reasoning and natural language semantics in traditional logic captures their complexity and productivity, accounting for the grounding of logical reasoning in perception raises several challenges. These include difficulties in explaining the integration of reasoning and perceptual processing, and in accounting for the evolution of human reasoning from sensorimotor origins. Central to these problems is the fact that traditional logic includes elements such as quantifiers and negation that do not obviously occur in perceptual representations. We propose a formal framework in terms of perceptual simulation that bridges this gap. We demonstrate that perceptual simulations have the power to explain crucial elements of logical human reasoning and also allow us to provide the first unified linguistic analysis of noun phrases, negative polarity items and branching quantifiers within a single cognitively motivated formal framework.