1IMAGES AND REASONING

1IMAGES AND REASONING KEIO UNIV. PRESS, 2005 Introductory Remarks Pierre Grialou, Giuseppe Longo and Mitsuhiro OkadaCo-editors This interdisciplinary book aims to raise the question of the possible non- linguistic aspects of reasoning. It is based on the symposium “Images, reason and reasoning” held in Paris on March 15 th 2004 and co-organized by Keio University of Tokyo and the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris. Within the framework of cognitive science, the computational theory of mind, views cognition as a symbol processing system. It has been argued (Fodor, 1975) that this conception requires the use of a language of thought. Thus, in this perspective, the cognitive processes, in particular reasoning, take place in such a language. Besides, from the perspective of logic, reasoning and inferences are modelled as relations between sentences. Both perspectives have lead either to focusing on the only linguistic aspects of reasoning or to the idea that reasoning strongly depends on language. This situation has evolved recently, with the development of a new field of research called “Diagrammatic Reasoning”. This undertaking gathers cognitive psychologists, logicians, AI researchers as well as philosophers whose goal is to understand how images are used and can be used by humans and machines in problem solving and reasoning (see, Glasgow, Hari Narayanan & Chandrasekaran, 1995; Anderson, Meyer & Olivier, 2002).

• linguistic aspects


• human reasoning


• cognitive principles


• mathematical reasoning


• language


• reasoning


• problems into spatial


• distinction between


• spatial relation