The Problems of the Mental Logic with the Double Negation: The Necessity of a Semantic Approach

The double negation has always been considered by the logical systems from ancient times to the present. In fact, that is an issue that the current syntactic theories studying human reasoning, for example, the mental logic theory, address today. However, in this paper, I claim that, in the case of some languages such as Spanish, the double negation causes problems for the cognitive theories mainly based on formal schemata and supporting the idea of a universal syntax of thought in the human mind. Thus, I propose that, given those problems, semantic frameworks such as that of the mental models theory seem to be more appropriate for explaining the human inferential activity.