CATEGORY BASED INDUCTION

Factors of premise categories influencing plausibility judgment of general arguments

Abstract

This study clarified factors of premise categories for plausibility judgment of Category Based Induction. A distance factor of premise categories was investigated in Experiment 1 by contrasting a pair of general arguments. The result showed that basically the arguments of which premise categories' distance was larger were judged more plausible. However, it was also indicated that a cluster structure and dimension of premise categories configuration might have affected the plausibility judgment. The dimension factor for plausibility judgment was examined in Experiment 2. The result showed that a majority of subjects had a more plausible judgment on the argument of which premise categories were located in parallel to their own weighted dimension. Experiment 3 examined whether the size dimension, possibly more fundamental than predation, was more important even for predation weighted subjects. The result showed that the number of subjects, who judged more plausible the argument of which premise categories were along size dimension, was not statistically trivial.