Inference

“ We consider an inference logically drawn from an established premiss to be true. Yet, in millions of cases, men have been wrong in the inferences they have thought thus drawn. Do we, therefore, argue that it is absurd to consider an inference true "on no other ground" than that it is logically drawn from an established premiss? ”

“ You could infer nothing at all. The arm of inference would be paralyzed, and the sword of truth broken in its grasp; and reason could only sit down and wait until recovery restored her limb, and further experience gave her new weapons.—Advance Sheets from Macmillan. ”

“ I had occasion earlier to remark that if one identifies "knowledge" with situations involving the function of inference, the problem of knowledge means the art of guiding this function most effectively. ”

“ If you got angry with my obstinacy, and knocked me down, I should experience painful sensations, but the existence of a mind external to me—and an angry one—would still be a matter of inference only. But we find that the inference is justified. We find that it “works,” and social life is possible. For the purposes, then, both of science and of ordinary life, we do reason from phenomenon to noumenon, from appearance to reality, from attribute to substance; and our reasoning justifies itself. ”

“ By far the greatest portion of our knowledge, whether of general truths or of particular facts, being avowedly matter of inference, nearly the whole, not only of science, but of human conduct, is amenable to the authority of logic. To draw inferences has been said to be the great business of life. Every one has daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining facts which he has not directly observed ”

“ Having noticed, in order to exclude from the province of Reasoning or Inference properly so called, the cases in which the progression from one truth to another is only apparent, the logical consequent being a mere repetition of the logical antecedent; we now pass to those which are cases of inference in the proper acceptation of the term, those in which we set out from known truths, to arrive at others really distinct from them. ”

“ All attempts at an inference that is anything more than an elaborated and often confused restatement of non-logical operations break down. The associational inference of empiricism, the subsumptive inference of rationalism, the transcendental inference of objective idealism, the77 analytical inference of neo-realism—all alike face the dilemma of an inference that is trifling or miraculous, tautologous or false. ”

“ And the mental process by which we pass from any perceived event or existence to other preceding, concomitant, or subsequent events or existences linked or woven with it in the chain or web of phenomena, we call inference. ”

“ What is actually on any occasion perceived by our senses being so minute in amount, and generally so unimportant a portion of the state of facts which we wish to ascertain or to communicate; it would be absurd to say that either in our observations, or in conveying their result to others, we ought not to mingle inference with fact; all that can be said is, that when we do so we ought to be aware of what we are doing, and to know what part of the assertion rests on consciousness, and is therefore indisputable, what part on inference, and is therefore questionable. ”

“ To discover the facts of inference and to demonstrate their connection with the facts of observation is the effort of all theorizing. A theory is, in brief, a statement in which the supposed facts of inference are reasonably connected with the known facts of observation. ”

“ I shall venture to affirm as a general proposition which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other; ... nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact. ”

“ Even in works which we are all reading, and in companies where we daily find ourselves, the logical conclusion of arguments, the natural inference from assumptions, would be simply that extreme position. ”

“ Inference is the process which from judgments about sensible things proceeds to judgments about things similar to sensible things. Though some conceptions are its conditions and some judgments its causes, inference itself in its conclusions causes many more judgments and conceptions. Finally, inference is an extension, not of ideas, but of beliefs, at first about existing things, afterwards about ideas, and even about words; about anything in short about which we think, in what is too fancifully called “the universe of discourse.” ”

“ For, once launched on this line of hypothesis and inference, with a Supreme Governor assumed, and the task thrown upon us of making out what he means us to infer and what we may suppose him to do and to intend, one of us may infer one thing and another of us another, and neither can possibly prove himself to be right or his adversary to be wrong. ”

“ Strictly, to speak of inferences, in the sense of conclusions, as immediate or mediate, is an abuse of language, derived from times before the distinction between inference as process and inference as result was generally felt. No doubt we ought rather to speak of Immediate and Mediate Evidence; but it is of little use to attempt to alter the traditional expressions of the science. ”

“ The greater the number and importance of the points of agreement, the more probable is the inference. (2) The greater the number and importance of the points of difference, the less probable is the inference. (3) The greater the number of unknown properties in the subject of our argument, the less the value of any inference from those that we do know. Of course the number of unknown properties can itself be estimated only by analogy. ”

“ By scientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new circumstances, by means of an observed order of events. By saying that this order of events is exact, we mean that it is exact enough to correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference we found to be in itself an assumption of uniformity, and that, as the known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of the inference increased. ”

“ The utmost certainty which can be given to a conclusion arrived at in the way of inference, stops at this point. When we have ascertained that the particular conclusion must stand or fall with the general uniformity of the laws of nature—that it is liable to no doubt except the doubt whether every event has a cause—we have done all that can be done for it. ”

“ Since Reasoning, or Inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other way; those who have not a thorough insight into the signification and purposes of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly. ”

“ If logical inference be, as it undoubtedly is, an instrument of truth, surely, it may be answered to me, in admitting the possibility of inferring the Divine Being and Attributes from the phenomena of nature, he distinctly admits a basis of truth for the doctrines of Religion. ”

“ True, the statement of a single significant fact without the addition of one other word may be convincing, but a moment's thought will show that the inference, which completes a chain of reasoning, is made in the mind of the hearer and presupposes other facts held in consideration. ”

“ That there is an intimate connection between judgment and inference is obvious enough. The aim of inference is to terminate itself in an adequate judgment of a situation, and the course of inference goes on through a series of partial and tentative judgments. ”

“ The real inference is always from particulars to particulars, from the observed instances to an unobserved one: but in drawing this inference, we conform to a formula which we have adopted for our guidance in such operations, and which is a record of the criteria by which we thought we had ascertained that we might distinguish when the inference could, and when it could not, be drawn. ”

“ The second remark which we would here make is, that Nature, in most cases, appears to put much more value on the inferences, or lessons, drawn from the knowledge we have acquired, than she does upon the knowledge itself. For example, in the case of the infant burning its finger, the circumstance itself will soon be forgotten; but the inference, or the impression acquired by its means, will remain. ”

“ Psychologists point out how much of what we think we see is supplied by association or unconscious inference, how much is mental interpretation, and how doubtful is the residuum which can be regarded as crude datum. ”

“ In the case of the art of inference, the art securely of going from the given to the absent, the dependence of mind upon inference, the fact that wherever inference occurs we have a conscious agent—one who recognizes, plans, invents, seeks out, deliberates, anticipates, and who, reacting to anticipations, fears, hates, desires, etc.—explains the theories which, because of misconception of the nature of mind and consciousness, have labeled logical distinctions psychical and subjective. ”

“ Observation extends only to the sensations by which we recognize objects; but the propositions which we make use of, either in science or in common life, relate mostly to the objects themselves. In every act of what is called observation, there is at least one inference—from the sensations to the presence of the object ”

“ Our assent to the conclusion being grounded on the truth of the premisses, we never could arrive at any knowledge by reasoning, unless something could be known antecedently to all reasoning.
Examples of truths known to us by immediate consciousness, are our own bodily sensations and mental feelings. I know directly, and of my own knowledge, that I was vexed yesterday, or that I am hungry to-day. Examples of truths which we know only by way of inference, are occurrences which took place while we were absent, the events recorded in history, or the theorems of mathematics. ”

“ The conceptual logic supposes that conception always precedes judgment; but the truth is that sensory judgment begins and inferential judgment ends by preceding conception. The supposed triple order—conception, judgment, reasoning—is defective and false. The real order is sensation and sensory judgment, conception, memory and memorial judgment, experience and experiential judgment, inference, inferential judgment, inferential conception. ”

“ The art of inference gives rise to specific features characterizing the inferred thing. The natural man reacts to the suggested thing as he would to something present. That is, he tends to accept it uncritically. ”

“ Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness;4 the latter, of Inference. ”

“ They were also issues of inference, for even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. ”

“ Let men be once fully perswaded of these two principles, That there is nothing in any object, consider'd in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; and, That even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience; ”

“ If these remarks are just; if the principles and rules of inference are the same whether we infer general propositions or individual facts; it follows that a complete logic of the sciences would be also a complete logic of practical business and common life. Since there is no case of legitimate inference from experience, in which the conclusion may not legitimately be a general proposition; an analysis of the process by which general truths are arrived at, is virtually an analysis of all induction whatever. ”

“ Not only may we reason from particulars to particulars without passing through generals, but we perpetually do so reason. All our earliest inferences are of this nature. From the first dawn of intelligence we draw inferences, but years elapse before we learn the use of general language. The child, who, having burned his fingers, avoids to thrust them again into the fire, has reasoned or inferred, though he has never thought of the general maxim, Fire burns. ”

“ Moreover, this love of truth must extend to a constant searching and inquisition of the mind, with the perpetual endeavor to keep inferences from observation or experiment unbiased, so far as may be, by natural predilections or favorite theories. ”

“ This throwing of the whole body of possible inferences from a given set of particulars, into one general expression, operates as a security for their being just inferences, in more ways than one. First, the general principle presents a larger object to the imagination than any of the singular propositions which it contains. ”

“ It means, briefly, that while general inferences may be drawn from wide and accurate observations of the workings of human nature, these inferences remain general and tentative, and if taken as rigid rules are sure to be misleading. ”

“ The universality of the confusion between perceptions and the inferences drawn from them, and the rarity of the power to discriminate the one from the other, ceases to surprise us when we consider that in the far greater number of instances the actual perceptions of our senses are of no importance or interest to us except as marks from which we infer something beyond them. ”