Contradiction in Universal and Particular Reasoning
Résumé
A wide range of essential reasoning tasks rely on contradiction identification, a cornerstone of human rationality, communication and debate founded on the inversion of the logical operators 'Every' and 'Some'. A high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) study was performed in 11 normal young adult. The cerebral network involved in the identification of contradiction included the orbito-frontal and anterior-cingulate cortices and the temporo-polar cortices. The event-related dynamic of this network showed an early negative deflection lasting 500 ms after sentence presentation. This was followed by a positive deflection lasting 1.5 s, which was different for the two logical operators. A lesser degree of network activation (either in neuron number or their level of phase locking or both) occurred while processing statements with 'Some', suggesting that this was a relatively simpler scenario with one example to be figured out, instead of the many examples or the absence of a counterexample searched for while processing statements with 'Every'. A self-generated reward system seemed to resonate the recruited circuitry when the contradictory task is successfully completed.
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