TUTORIAL 5: for Semester 2 Week 6

Human versus Logical Reasoning

For the tutorial we would like you to think of 3 examples where human reasoning does not match logical reasoning, or where common beliefs about physics (i.e. naive physics), or other sciences, does not match the theoretical predictions of science, and be prepared to discuss these in the tutorial.

One example is: consider the proposition 'if it is raining then people take umbrellas'. Logically this implies: 'if I do not see umbrellas then it is not raining'. It is common to infer from this: 'if I see umbrellas it must be raining' - which is faulty logic.  What else would you need to know to fix this?