As philosophers, linguists, and psychologists have long recognized, representing possibilities is central to mental life. Modal concepts (possible, necessary, impossible) are fundamental to moral reasoning (e.g., in distinctions between permissible, impermissible, and obligatory) and in formal mathematics and logic (e.g., where deductive necessity is the relation between axiomatic primitives and the conclusions licensed by derivational […]

Sometimes we accept propositions, sometimes we reject them, and sometimes we take propositions to be worth considering but not yet established, as merely possible. The result is a complex representation with logical structure. Is the ability to mark propositions as merely possible part of our innate representational toolbox or does it await development, perhaps relying […]

Humans can imagine what happened in the past and what will happen in the future, but also what did not happen and what might happen. We reflect on envisioned events from alternative timelines, while knowing that we only ever live on one timeline. Considering alternative timelines rests on representations of temporal junctures, or points in […]