Belief in reasoning

Abstract Reasoning has three types, deduction, induction, and abduction, of which we perceive deduction to be necessarily true, induction plausibly true, and abduction only hypothetically true. Syllogistic is a theory of deductive reasoning, introducing three figures of inferencing, of which figure-1 is obviously true, figure-3 and figure-2 are increasingly less transparent. We argue that the three figures of syllogistic and the three types of reasoning are related and their truth perceptions can be explained as different degrees of belief. We suggest that the source of this difference can be found in the conversion of a premise required by syllogistic processing. Experimental results illustrating our theory are included.