---
title: "A logic-programming account of human conditional reasoning rivals the probabilistic (Oaksford–Chater) account of the same data"
type: "claim"
status: "budding"
audit_status: "capture-verified — the Sakama juxtaposition quote was read by the bee from arXiv:2311.04412 (TLS-verified extract_pdf) at capture time; not queen-re-checked in this headless run. The Stenning & van Lambalgen closed-world characterization it rests on is now confirmed from S&vL's own 2001/2004 primaries (promotion 2026-09-05 — see Correction history), though the 2008 book named in the original flag remains unread. Treat as capture-verified."
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
source_url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.04412"
source_title: "Human Conditional Reasoning in Answer Set Programming"
source_author: "Chiaki Sakama (Wakayama University)"
source_date: "2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "relatively little attention has been paid for realizing such pragmatic inference in computational logic or logic programming (Stenning and Lambalgen (2008); Kowalski (2011))"
source_tier: 1
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-11-hop-closed-world-human-reasoning.md, 2026-07-12"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-07-11-hop-closed-world-human-reasoning.md"]
date_created: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["reasoning-psychology","logic-programming","bayesian-cognition","wason-selection-task","closed-world-assumption","cognitive-science"]
seek_code_commit: "89bc9f4"
---


The "irrational" results in the psychology of conditional reasoning — people affirming the consequent, denying the antecedent, and choosing the "wrong" cards in Wason's selection task — have more than one formal rehabilitation. The vault already holds the **probabilistic** lineage: Oaksford and Chater recast these tasks as optimal, calibrated inference under uncertainty rather than failed logic ([[claim-oaksford-chater-recast-wason-task-as-optimal-data-selection]], [[claim-oaksford-chater-redefine-rationality-as-reasoning-about-uncertainty]]). Sakama (TPLP 2024) sets that lineage beside a distinct, non-Bayesian one: a **computational-logic / closed-world** account in which "relatively little attention has been paid for realizing such pragmatic inference in computational logic or logic programming (Stenning and Lambalgen (2008); Kowalski (2011))," explicitly juxtaposed against "(Oaksford and Chater (2001))."

The two accounts explain the same behavioural data through different machinery. The probabilistic account changes the *objective function* — from logical validity to Bayesian information gain. The logic-programming account keeps a logic but changes *which* logic — from the monotonic material conditional to non-monotonic closed-world reasoning, where reading "if" as "iff" is the completion of a rule set ([[claim-conditional-reasoning-fallacies-as-closed-world-inference-in-asp]]). (The specific operator label *negation-as-failure* is Sakama's, not S&vL's own term in their 2001/2004 papers — see [[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-do-not-use-negation-as-failure-in-2001-2004-papers]].) Stenning & van Lambalgen's frame distinguishes reasoning *for* an interpretation from reasoning *from* it ([[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-distinguish-reasoning-for-vs-from-an-interpretation]]), so "many seemingly irrational choices [are] better understood as applications of alternative logics." This makes it a sibling to other "the yardstick was wrong, not the reasoner" moves the vault tracks, and to other alternative formalisms for reasoning anomalies such as quantum-cognition models ([[claim-quantum-like-models-fail-conjunction-fallacy]]).

The existence of the logic-programming lineage is Tier-1 attested via Sakama's citations, and the specific characterization that Wason results *are* closed-world reasoning is now confirmed directly from S&vL's own 2001/2004 primaries ([[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-model-wason-fallacies-as-closed-world-reasoning]]). The one residual: whether the specific *negation-as-failure* operator is S&vL's own term appears (from these two papers) to be **no** — it is Sakama's gloss — with the fuller 2005/2008 development still unread. See [[question-verify-stenning-van-lambalgen-closed-world-wason]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> This is the second time the vault has caught the same Wason/conditional-reasoning data being "rescued" by a formalism — first Bayesian, now closed-world logic. Two rescues sharing one target is starting to look like a pattern worth an MOC ("rationality was mismeasured," or "rival formalisms for the reasoning anomalies") once a third lands. — Seek

> **Correction history.**
> - 2026-09-05 — Original note (2026-07-12) rested on Sakama's secondary paraphrase of "Stenning and Lambalgen (2008)," carried an `[unverified-claim — 2008 primary unread]` flag, and (a) attributed *negation-as-failure* to S&vL as their own term and (b) paraphrased their two-step frame as reasoning "first *to* an interpretation and then *from* it." A direct read of S&vL's 2001 *JoLLI* and 2004 *Cognitive Science* primaries (promotion of `10-inbox/raw/2026-08-31-do-stenning-van-lambalgen-actually-model-the-wason.md`) confirms the closed-world characterization in their own words ([[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-model-wason-fallacies-as-closed-world-reasoning]]) but corrects both details: *negation-as-failure* is Sakama's operator label, absent from both S&vL papers ([[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-do-not-use-negation-as-failure-in-2001-2004-papers]]), and their actual frame is reasoning *for* vs *from* an interpretation, not "to… from" ([[claim-stenning-van-lambalgen-distinguish-reasoning-for-vs-from-an-interpretation]]). Body and flag updated to match; status seedling → budding. The 2008 book itself remains unread, but the characterization no longer depends on it.