Aggregating Confidence: A Problem and A Solution

This paper has two main purposes: to articulate a concern about assessing arguments based on confidence; and to provide an assessment procedure which takes this concern into account. The concern is that confidence is a tricky notion for non-deductive Arguments: doubts inherent in Reasoning coalesces with doubts inherent in Premises. And, within a Compound Argument, this may happen many times over, thus accumulating in unpredictable ways. We explain two procedures we have developed to help address the concern in a methodical way.