Blackwell Reference Online

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It is not unusual to find it said that, an inference is a (perhaps very complex) act of thought by virtue of which act (1) I pass from a set of one or more propositions or statements to a proposition or statement and (2) it appears that the latter is true if the former is or are. This psychological characterization has occurred widely in the literature under more or less inessential variations. It is natural to desire a better characterization of inference. But attempts to do so by constructing a fuller psychological explanation fail to comprehend the grounds on which inferences will be objectively valid – a point elaborately made by Gottlob F rege . And attempts to better understand the nature of inference through the device of the representation of inferences by formal-logical calculations or derivations (1) leaves us puzzled about the relation of formal-logical derivations to the informal inferences they are supposed to represent or reconstruct, and (2) leaves us worried about the sense of such formal derivations. Are these derivations inferences? And aren't informal inferenc needed in order to apply the rules governing the constructions of formal derivations (inferring that this operation is an application of that formal rule)? These are concerns cultivated by, for example, W ittgenstein . Coming up with a good and adequate characterization of inference – and even working out ... log in or subscribe to read full text