Mental Models are Compatible with Logical Forms

Abstract

The mental models theory is a current cognitive approach claiming that human intellectual activity is essentially about semantic possibilities and that syntax and logical form are not relevant. Many experimental results support this theory and its predictions. So, it appears to be justified to assume its main theses. However, in this paper, I argue that the acceptance of the mental models theory does not necessarily have to lead to a rejection of logical forms. Clear relationships between the theory and standard logic can be easily found, and I try to show this in two ways. On the one hand, I claim that the models that the theory assigns to sentences are compatible with truth tables. On the other hand, I also defend that the definitions of a connective by means of another one that can be given in standard logic hold in the mental models theory too, since the sentences that are equivalent in the former have exactly the same models in the latter