Questions tagged [inference]
The inference tag has no usage guidance.
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Abduction, deduction and induction in medical diagnosis and intervention
(Apologies if my views on logical inference are overly simplistic -- I'm a radiologist by profession, very far from a philosophy major. My goal is to understand what medical decisions are and where ...
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The application of logic to knowledge seems problematic
I was reading Dretske's text on 'Is knowledge closed under known entailment?' and I saw him using the material conditional while claiming entailment. But, in my head these two seem different. Since ...
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Are all coherent inferences deductive, inductive or abductive?
Are all coherent inferences deductive, inductive or abductive? If I justify a belief (to some degree) to myself, and it is not the best explanation, I am not deducing it from any premise, and it is ...
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Does meaning begin with what can usefully be inferred?
There's linguistic meaning, and then there's meaning in the sense of purpose. I want to talk about a kind of non-linguistic, non-purposeful meaning. Let me give a few examples.
You see that the lower ...
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Is religious authority justified?
Is religious authority justified?
I mean religious broadly thought, as something that may be a mystic non-inferential claim (and I'm especially interesting in these).
An inference is the process of ...
user67675
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Are there any examples of two theories that accurately describe a phenomenon where the more complex one was found to be correct?
I was reading this answer on how Solomonoff's theory of inductive inference can be used to posit the more correct theory amongst a set that provide the expected "answer", where the shorter, ...
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Would the imaginary unit be the truth-value of sentences formed using √𝐧𝐨𝐭?
Section 4.3 of "Sentence Connectives in Formal Logic" discusses a concept of demi-negation or what is (for the sake of the text) resolved to a concept of "the square root of negation&...
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What is a rule of inductive inference?
What is a rule of inductive inference? I'm not looking for any examples, but for definitions - what makes the logical form of an inductive argument a rule of inductive inference?
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Inference as tentative deduction
I've heard people make confident assertions about the categorical distinction between inference and deduction, but I'm not convinced.
I'm curious to hear rebuttals to the assertion that "...
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Axioms/premises vs. rules of inference
Deductive philosophical arguments are often presented semi-formally as a list of premises and the conclusion (and sometimes combinations of such sub-arguments). What is virtually never stated are the ...
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Why are the laws of the universe so perfect and consistent?
First of all, for the premise of this question, let's disregard quantum mechanics and relativity (whose existence is another big question ─ why did either of these very complicated sets of physical ...
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Can inferences be objective?
Is it correct to say that inferences are subjective at all times because they are always made by individual minds and depend on a range of factors influencing those particular minds?
Or can inferences ...
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The logic of analytic inferences
Consider the following argument:
P1: A is a father.
Therefore: A is a parent.
The above inference is analytic and valid: it is impossible that someone is a father without also being a parent. ...
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Does conjoining two questions count as an "erotetic inference"? [closed]
For example:
Why is an eagle like a microscope?
Who doesn't go here?
"Therefore," why is an eagle like a microscope and who doesn't go here?
Part of why I'm unsure about this being an &...
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Examples of, or counterexamples to, the concept of erotetic inference?
Suppose that the generality-particularity ordering is the comprehensive ordering on inference. Compare:
What is the first integer after 2?
What is the first prime integer after 2?
(2) would seem ...
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