Reasoning From Uncertain Premises

Previous studies have shown that 1 participants are reluctant to accept a conclusion as certainly true when it is derived from a valid conditional argument that includes a doubtful premise, and 2 participants typically link the degree of uncertainty found in a given premise set to its conclusion. Two experiments were designed to further investigate these phenomena. Ninety adult participants in Experiment 1 were first asked to judge the validity of three conditional arguments Modus Ponens, Denial of the Antecedent, and Affirmation of the Consequent. They were then required to evaluate conclusion uncertainty as a function of two degrees of asserted uncertainty in the major conditional premise (If p then it is very probable that q and if p then it is not very probable that q) of the arguments from the first task that were otherwise unchanged. Results revealed an effect for asserted-uncertainty in two of the three argument forms. Marginal support was found for the hypothesis that perceived argument validity w...

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