The only way to induce a consequence in a scenario is to have pattern matched the scenario. Pattern matching can be very abstract. It can use programs that may not halt. You are conflating patterns with exact details. A pattern can be as general as "[wildcard]." The human psyche promotes survival over *, every scenario.

You talk about representations and reasoning but are not assessing the fact that the human brain is literally a decision maker, acting on stored procedures and memory. Any representations and any reasoning will only apply to a select scenario or select objects, regardless to how you wish to define the pattern, the fact that a subset of abstractness/generality out of the whole of existence is specified, implies a pattern that is coded for implicitly or explicitly.