Page "Counterfactual conditional" Paragraph 12

Ruth M. J. Byrne proposed in The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality that people construct mental representations that encompass two possibilities when they understand, and reason from, a counterfactual conditional, e. g., ' if Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have '.

They envisage the conjecture ' Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and someone else did ' and they also think about the presupposed facts ' Oswald did shoot Kennedy and someone else did not ' ( Byrne, 2005 ).

According to the mental model theory of reasoning, they construct mental models of the alternative possibilities, as described in Deduction ( Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991 ).