The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that ...

In his [2011], Lionel Shapiro proposes a very interesting deflationist conception of logical consequence, according to which the logical-consequence predicate applying to sentences serves as a merely expressive device allowing us to talk in a generalising way about typically non-linguistic entailment facts (just as, according to a deflationist conception of truth, the truth predicate applying t...

This article concerns the structure of defeasible arguments like: 'if Bob has red spots, Bob has the measles; Bob has red spots; therefore Bob has the measles.' The issue is whether such arguments have the form of modus ponens or not. Either way there is a problem. If they don't have the form of modus ponens, the common opinion to the contrary taught in leading logic textbooks is wrong. But if ...

There has long been a history of studies investigating how people (" ordinary people ") perform on tasks that involve deductive reasoning. The upshot of these studies is that people characteristically perform some deductive tasks well but others badly. For instance, studies show that people will typically perform MP (" modus ponens " : from 'If A then B' and 'A', infer 'B') and bi-conditional M...

The relationship between situational factors and the modus operandi of 103 adolescents involved in sexual offenses against children (12 year old or less) is analyzed. Situational factors taken into account in this study are the location of the crime, the offender-victim relationship and the presence of deviant sexual fantasies involving the victim prior to the offense. Modus operandi strategies...

2 Premise Interpretation in Conditional Reasoning Conditional sentences are pervasive in human communication. Many arguments contain conditional premises or a conditional conclusion. The expression conditional reasoning could appropriately be applied to such arguments. However, there is a tradition in psychological research, which will be followed here, to restrict the use of this expression to...

The relationship between situational factors and the modus operandi of 103 adolescents involved in sexual offenses against children (12 years old or younger) is analyzed. Situational factors taken into account in this study are the location of the crime, the offender-victim relationship, and the presence of deviant sexual fantasies involving the victim prior to the offense. Modus operandi strat...