Title: Natural selection and Wason's `selection' task: is
evolutionary psychology an empirical acivity?

ABSTRACT

I will talk about some recent work with Michiel van Lambalgen on
conditional reasoning in Wason's selection task. The dominant theory
of the most discussed `content effect' in this task is an
`evolutionary psychology explanation' due to Cosmides. I will present
some analysis, along with some tutorial dialogue evidence of a novel
kind, which reveals how little empirical curiosity has been shown
toward both the task itself, and the nature of this particular
evolutionary theory.  

More generally, `rational analysis' theories (Oaksford & Chater) of
the task are also shown to be deficient in their attention to meaning.
Our argument is that the psychology of reasoning cannot afford to
ignore theories of semantics of natural language, and could be greatly
empirically enriched if semantic insights were allowed to guide their
investigations.