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Deductive Reasoning
Edited by Joshua Schechter (Brown University)
About this topic
| Summary | Deductive reasoning is (very roughly) the kind of reasoning in which the premises logically entail the conclusion, at least assuming that no mistake has been made in the reasoning. The premises of a deductive argument may be propositions that the thinker believes or propositions that the thinker temporarily assumes to be true in order to explore their consequences. Deductive reasoning contrasts with inductive (or ampliative ) reasoning, the kind of reasoning in which the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. One important question concerning deductive reasoning is whether we do, in fact, engage in anything that could reasonably be called “deductive reasoning”. Some philosophers and psychologists have denied that there is any such thing, though the consensus in both psychology and philosophy seems to be that there is a distinctive kind of deductive reasoning. Within cognitive science, an important question concerns the nature of deductive reasoning – does it depend on applying rules to mental representations that resemble the sentences of natural language or does it involve reasoning with diagrammic models? Within philosophy, there are important questions concerning the epistemology of deductive reasoning. Which deductive rules are thinkers justified in employing? What makes it the case that certain rules of inference preserve justification (or knowledge) rather than others? |
| Key works | See Harman 1986 for the claim that logic does not provide a theory of good reasoning (and that there is no such thing as deductive inference). See Field 2009 for a reply. A classic paper on deduction is Carroll 1895, which raises the question of how deductive inferences rationally compel belief in their conclusion. Dummett 1978 discusses the issue of what it is to justify deduction raised in the context of deciding between classical and intuitionist logic). Also see Haack 1976 on the difficulty of justifying deduction in a non-circular way. There are many different account of the justification of deductive rules of inference. They are often presented as part of a more general theory of a priori knowledge and justification. For instance, Bealer 1999 presents a theory based on intuition. BonJour 1998 presents a theory based on rational insight. Boghossian 2003 and Peacocke 1993 present theories based on the nature of concepts. Horwich 2008 argues that it is a primitive fact which rules of inference are justified. |
| Introductions | For a brief introductory article, see Schechter 2009. |
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Related
Siblings
- Argument (792)
- Critical Thinking (244)
- Fallacies (204)
- Induction (2,070 | 35)
- Inference (299)
- Inference to the Best Explanation (428 | 209)
- The Nature of Reasoning (194)
- Rhetoric (81)
- Reasoning, Misc (115)
See also
- Epistemology of Logic (228)
- Logical Consequence and Entailment (1,053)
- The A Priori (1,082 | 380)
Contents
252 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 252 |
- Note on deductive inferences.Matheus Silva - manuscriptIn relation to inferences, there is a tendency to conflate alethic with epistemic modalities. Concerning deductive inferences, necessity is conflated with certainty, but deductive inferences can be just likely based on the available evidence. Non-deductive inferences are defined by their uncertainty, but their epistemic status is insufficient to distinguish them from deductive inferences.
- How We Naturally Reason.Fred Sommers - manuscriptIn the 17th century, Hobbes stated that we reason by addition and subtraction. Historians of logic note that Hobbes thought of reasoning as “a ‘species of computation’” but point out that “his writing contains in fact no attempt to work out such a project.” Though Leibniz mentions the plus/minus character of the positive and negative copulas, neither he nor Hobbes say anything about a plus/minus character of other common logical words that drive our deductive judgments, words like ‘some’, ‘all’, ‘if’, (...)
- Rationality in reasoning: The problem of deductive competence.Jonathan Evans & David E. Over - unknown - Current Psychology of Cognition 16 (1-2):3-38.
- Deductive reasoning and the brain.Charles M. Wharton & Jordan Grafman - forthcoming - Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
- Minimal Rationality and the Web of Questions.Daniel Hoek - 2025 - In Peter van Elswyk, Dirk Kindermann, Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini & Andy Egan (eds.), Unstructured Content. Oxford University Press.This paper proposes a new account of bounded or minimal doxastic rationality (in the sense of Cherniak 1986), based on the notion that beliefs are answers to questions (à la Yalcin 2018). The core idea is that minimally rational beliefs are linked through thematic connections, rather than entailment relations. Consequently, such beliefs are not deductively closed, but they are closed under parthood (where a part is an entailment that answers a smaller question). And instead of avoiding all inconsistency, minimally rational (...)
- Idle Questions.Jens Kipper, Alexander W. Kocurek & Zeynep Soysal - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy.In light of the problem of logical omniscience, some scholars have argued that belief is question-sensitive: agents don't simply believe propositions but rather believe answers to questions. Hoek (2022) has recently developed a version of this approach on which a belief state is a "web" of questions and answers. Here, we present several challenges to Hoek's question-sensitive account of belief. First, Hoek's account is prone to very similar logical omniscience problems as those he claims to address. Second, the link between (...)
- Electrical analysis of logical complexity: Brain Informatics Open Access an exploratory eeg study of logically valid/ invalid deducive inference.Salto Francisco, Requena Carmen, Rodríguez Víctor, Poza Jesús & Hornero Roberto - 2023 - Brain Informatics 10 (13):1-15.Abstract Introduction Logically valid deductive arguments are clear examples of abstract recursive computational proce‐ dures on propositions or on probabilities. However, it is not known if the cortical time‐consuming inferential pro‐ cesses in which logical arguments are eventually realized in the brain are in fact physically different from other kinds of inferential processes. Methods In order to determine whether an electrical EEG discernible pattern of logical deduction exists or not, a new experimental paradigm is proposed contrasting logically valid and invalid (...)
- Electrophysiological connectivity of logical deduction: Early cortical MEG study.Anton Toro Luis F., Salto Francisco, Requena Carmen & Maestu Fernando - 2023 - Cortex 166:365-376.Complex human reasoning involves minimal abilities to extract conclusions implied in the available information. These abilities are considered “deductive” because they exemplify certain abstract relations among propositions or probabilities called deductive arguments. However, the electrophysiological dynamics which supports such complex cognitive pro- cesses has not been addressed yet. In this work we consider typically deductive logico- probabilistically valid inferences and aim to verify or refute their electrophysiological functional connectivity differences from invalid inferences with the same content (same relational variables, same (...)
- Is Philosophy Exceptional? A Corpus-Based, Quantitative Study.Moti Mizrahi & Michael Adam Dickinson - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (5):666-683.Drawing on the epistemology of logic literature on anti-exceptionalism about logic, we set out to investigate the following metaphilosophical questions empirically: Is philosophy special? Are its methods (dis)continuous with science? More specifically, we test the following metaphilosophical hypotheses empirically: philosophical deductivism, philosophical inductivism, and philosophical abductivism. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we searched through a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (N = 435,703) to find patterns of (...)
- Inference Without the Taking Condition.Declan Smithies - 2023 - In Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford & Matthias Steup (eds.), Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 130-146.What is involved in making an inference? This chapter argues against what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition: "Inferring necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion and drawing his conclusion because of that fact" (2014: 5). I won’t argue that the Taking Condition is incoherent: that nothing can coherently play the role that takings are supposed to play in inference. Instead, I’ll argue that it cannot plausibly explain all the inferential knowledge that we ordinarily take ourselves (...)
- The link between transitive reasoning and mathematics achievement in preadolescence: the role of relational processing and deductive reasoning.Terry Tin-Yau Wong & Kinga Morsanyi - 2023 - Thinking and Reasoning 29 (4):531-558.The link between logic and mathematics has long been recognized by theorists from various fields. For instance, the mathematician, Bertrand Russell (1919), described logic and math as intrinsically...
- The Hereby-Commit Account of Inference.Christopher Blake-Turner - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (1):86-101.An influential way of distinguishing inferential from non-inferential processes appeals to representational states: an agent infers a conclusion from some premises only if she represents those premises as supporting that conclusion. By contrast, when some premises merely cause an agent to believe the conclusion, there is no relevant representational state. While promising, the appeal to representational states invites a regress problem, first famously articulated by Lewis Carroll. This paper develops a novel account of inference that invokes representational states without succumbing (...)
- Questions in Action.Daniel Hoek - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (3):113-143.Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...)
- Using Computer-Assisted Argument Mapping to Teach Reasoning to Students.Martin Davies, Ashley Barnett & Tim van Gelder - 2021 - In J. Anthony Blair (ed.), The Critical Thinking Anthology. pp. 115-152.Argument mapping is a way of diagramming the logical structure of an argument to explicitly and concisely represent reasoning. The use of argument mapping in critical thinking instruction has increased dramatically in recent decades. This paper overviews the innovation and provides a procedural approach for new teaches wanting to use argument mapping in the classroom. A brief history of argument mapping is provided at the end of this paper.
- Dogramaci’s deflationism about rationality.Jason A. DeWitt - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):4437-4455.Just as Quine and others have argued for a deflationism about the property of truth, Sinan Dogramaci has argued for a deflationism about rationality. Specifically, Dogramaci claims that we have no reason to think that the basic, deductive, epistemic rules we call “rational” have any sort of “unifying property.” A “unifying property” is a property that is necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily illuminating. My goal in this paper is to undermine Dogramaci’s argument for this radical position. I do this by first (...)
- How Universal Generalization Works According to Natural Reason.Kyle S. Hodge - 2021 - Cogency: Journal of Reasoning and Argumentation 13 (2):139-148.Universal Generalization, if it is not the most poorly understood inference rule in natural deduction, then it is the least well explained or justified. The inference rule is, prima facie, quite ambitious: on the basis of a fact established of one thing, I may infer that the fact holds of every thing in the class to which the one belongs—a class which may contain indefinitely many things. How can such an inference be made with any confidence as to its validity (...)
- Adversariality in Argumentation: Shortcomings of Minimal Adversariality and A Possible Reconstruction.Iñaki Xavier Larrauri Pertierra - 2021 - Argumentation 36 (1):17-34.Minimal adversariality consists in the opposition of contradictory conclusions in argumentation, and its usual metaphorical expression as a game between combating arguers has seen it be criticized from a number of perspectives: the language used, whether cooperation best attains the argumentative telos of epistemic betterment, and the ideal nature of the metaphor itself. This paper explores primarily the idealization of deductive argumentation, which is problematic due to its attenuated applicability to a dialectic involving premises and justificatory biases that are left (...)
- Are Rules of Inference Superfluous? Wittgenstein vs. Frege and Russell.Gilad Nir - 2021 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 40 (2):45-61.In Tractatus 5.132 Wittgenstein argues that inferential justification depends solely on the understanding of the premises and conclusion, and is not mediated by any further act. On this basis he argues that Frege’s and Russell’s rules of inference are “senseless” and “superfluous”. This line of argument is puzzling, since it is unclear that there could be any viable account of inference according to which no such mediation takes place. I show that Wittgenstein’s rejection of rules of inference can be motivated (...)
- Moral Knowledge By Deduction.Declan Smithies - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3):537-563.How is moral knowledge possible? This paper defends the anti-Humean thesis that we can acquire moral knowledge by deduction from wholly non-moral premises. According to Hume’s Law, as it has become known, we cannot deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, since it is “altogether inconceivable how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it” (Hume, 1739, 3.1.1). This paper explores the prospects for a deductive theory of moral knowledge that rejects Hume’s Law.
- The epistemology of modality and the problem of modal epistemic friction.Anand Jayprakash Vaidya & Michael Wallner - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):1909-1935.There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years: conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we call the problem of modal epistemic friction. One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yield modal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism (...)
- Reconsidering the Alleged Cases of Knowledge from Falsehood.Kok Yong Lee - 2020 - Philosophical Investigations 44 (2):151-162.A number of philosophers have recently proposed several alleged cases of “knowledge from falsehood,” i.e., cases of inferential knowledge epistemised by an inference with a false crucial premise. This paper examines such cases and argues against interpreting them as cases of knowledge from falsehood. Specifically, I argue that the inferences in play in such cases are in no position to epistemise their conclusions.
- Znaczenie znaczenia w argumentacji. Zarys argumentów semantycznych.Jakub Pruś - 2020 - In Ewa Szkudlarek-Śmiechowicz, Wierzbicka, Agnieszka & Elwira Olejniczak (eds.), Słowo. Znaczenie – struktura – kontekst. pp. 53–67.Jeśli można mówić o modzie w badaniach naukowych, to semantyka jest od prawie wieku niewątpliwie jedną z bardziej modnych dziedzin w nauce. Badają ją nie tylko logicy i filozofowie języka, lecz także kulturoznawcy, antropologowie, filologowie, kognitywiści czy informatycy. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu zbadanie roli, jaką odgrywa semantyka w teorii argumentacji, a dokładniej — zarysowanie pewnego modelu argumentacji, który modyfikuje znaczenia terminów dla celów argumentacyjnych. Najpierw przedstawię kilka przykładowych argumentów semantycznych, analizując każdy z nich na tyle, aby wydobyć pewne subtelności (...)
- Introduction.Andrew Aberdein & Matthew Inglis - 2019 - In Andrew Aberdein & Matthew Inglis (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1-13.There has been little overt discussion of the experimental philosophy of logic or mathematics. So it may be tempting to assume that application of the methods of experimental philosophy to these areas is impractical or unavailing. This assumption is undercut by three trends in recent research: a renewed interest in historical antecedents of experimental philosophy in philosophical logic; a “practice turn” in the philosophies of mathematics and logic; and philosophical interest in a substantial body of work in adjacent disciplines, such (...)$42.95 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark 1 citation - Knowledge of logical generality and the possibility of deductive reasoning.Corine Besson - 2019 - In Anders Nes & Timothy Hoo Wai Chan (eds.), Inference and Consciousness. London: Routledge. pp. 172-196.I address a type of circularity threat that arises for the view that we employ general basic logical principles in deductive reasoning. This type of threat has been used to argue that whatever knowing such principles is, it cannot be a fully cognitive or propositional state, otherwise deductive reasoning would not be possible. I look at two versions of the circularity threat and answer them in a way that both challenges the view that we need to apply general logical principles (...)
- Small Steps and Great Leaps in Thought: The Epistemology of Basic Deductive Rules.Joshua Schechter - 2019 - In Magdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Jackson (eds.), Reasoning: New Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking. Oxford University Press.We are justified in employing the rule of inference Modus Ponens (or one much like it) as basic in our reasoning. By contrast, we are not justified in employing a rule of inference that permits inferring to some difficult mathematical theorem from the relevant axioms in a single step. Such an inferential step is intuitively “too large” to count as justified. What accounts for this difference? In this paper, I canvass several possible explanations. I argue that the most promising approach (...)
- Isolating Correct Reasoning.Alex Worsnip - 2019 - In Magdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Jackson (eds.), Reasoning: New Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking. Oxford University Press.This paper tries to do three things. First, it tries to make it plausible that correct rules of reasoning do not always preserve justification: in other words, if you begin with a justified attitude, and reason correctly from that premise, it can nevertheless happen that you’ll nevertheless arrive at an unjustified attitude. Attempts to show that such cases in fact involve following an incorrect rule of reasoning cannot be vindicated. Second, it also argues that correct rules of reasoning do not (...)
- Cómo pensar sobre otra cosa.Axel Barceló - 2018 - In Max A. Freund, Max Fernandez de Castro & Marco Ruffino (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Logic: Recent Trends in Latin America and Spain. College Publications.Pronpongo una nueva manera de concebir la aceptación de proposiciones y su relación con la creencia y la inferencia. Argumento además que adoptar esta propuesta nos permite resolver de manera relativamente sencilla algunas paradojas aparentemente tan disímbolas cómo la del prefacio, la lotería y el sorites. Según esta propuesta, el error detrás de la paradoja sorítica es pensar que quién cree que hay una línea divisoria entre lo que cae dentro de la extensión de un término y lo que cae (...)
- Norms, reasons and reasoning: a guide through Lewis Carroll’s regress argument.Corine Besson - 2018 - In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.This paper concerns connection between knowing or accepting a logical principle such as Modus Ponens and actions of reasoning involving it. Discussions of this connection typically mention the so-called ‘Lewis Carroll Regress’ and there is near consensus that the regress shows something important about it. Also, although the regress explicitly concerns logic, many philosophers think that it establishes a more general truth, about the structurally similar connection between epistemic or practical principles and actions involving them. This paper’s first aim is (...)(collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (4 more)Export citation Bookmark 10 citations
- Believing epistemic contradictions.Beddor Bob & Simon Goldstein - 2018 - Review of Symbolic Logic (1):87-114.What is it to believe something might be the case? We develop a puzzle that creates difficulties for standard answers to this question. We go on to propose our own solution, which integrates a Bayesian approach to belief with a dynamic semantics for epistemic modals. After showing how our account solves the puzzle, we explore a surprising consequence: virtually all of our beliefs about what might be the case provide counterexamples to the view that rational belief is closed under logical (...)
- Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance.Finnur Dellsén - 2018 - Synthese 195 (7):3121-3141.Deductive Cogency holds that the set of propositions towards which one has, or is prepared to have, a given type of propositional attitude should be consistent and closed under logical consequence. While there are many propositional attitudes that are not subject to this requirement, e.g. hoping and imagining, it is at least prima facie plausible that Deductive Cogency applies to the doxastic attitude involved in propositional knowledge, viz. belief. However, this thought is undermined by the well-known preface paradox, leading a (...)
- The link between deductive reasoning and mathematics.Kinga Morsanyi, Teresa McCormack & Eileen O'Mahony - 2018 - Thinking and Reasoning 24 (2):234-257.Recent studies have shown that deductive reasoning skills are related to mathematical abilities. Nevertheless, so far the links between mathematical abilities and these two forms of deductive inference have not been investigated in a single study. It is also unclear whether these inference forms are related to both basic maths skills and mathematical reasoning, and whether these relationships still hold if the effects of fluid intelligence are controlled. We conducted a study with 87 adult participants. The results showed that transitive (...)
- Inferential Transitions.Jake Quilty-Dunn & Eric Mandelbaum - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3):532-547.ABSTRACTThis paper provides a naturalistic account of inference. We posit that the core of inference is constituted by bare inferential transitions, transitions between discursive mental representations guided by rules built into the architecture of cognitive systems. In further developing the concept of BITs, we provide an account of what Boghossian [2014] calls ‘taking’—that is, the appreciation of the rule that guides an inferential transition. We argue that BITs are sufficient for implicit taking, and then, to analyse explicit taking, we posit (...)
- Knowledge Grounded on Pure Reasoning.Luis Rosa - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1):156-173.In this paper I deal with epistemological issues that stem from the hypothesis that reasoning is not only a means of transmitting knowledge from premise-beliefs to conclusion-beliefs, but also a primary source of knowledge in its own right. The idea is that one can gain new knowledge on the basis of suppositional reasoning. After making some preliminary distinctions, I argue that there are no good reasons to think that purported examples of knowledge grounded on pure reasoning are just examples of (...)
- Variables de Medida del Razonamiento Deductivo.Francisco Salto, Paula Alvarez-Merino & Carmen Requena - 2018 - Revista Iberoamericana de Diagnstico y Evaluación Psicológica 49 (4):59-75.Hay doble pulsión en el centro de la discusión del razonamiento deductivo. Una conduce aparentemente a la abstracción y dominios arbitrarios, mientras que la otra conduce a la concreción y la dependencia del contenido. El objetivo de esta investigación es diseñar, aplicar y validar un instrumento de evaluación que nos permita corroborar si el razonamiento deductivo maneja reglas lógicas o contenidos. La muestra de estudio se compuso de 80 participantes (edad 18-77 años). El test consta de 60 ítems categorizados en: (...)
- Is there a reliability challenge for logic?Joshua Schechter - 2018 - Philosophical Issues 28 (1):325-347.There are many domains about which we think we are reliable. When there is prima facie reason to believe that there is no satisfying explanation of our reliability about a domain given our background views about the world, this generates a challenge to our reliability about the domain or to our background views. This is what is often called the reliability challenge for the domain. In previous work, I discussed the reliability challenges for logic and for deductive inference. I argued (...)
- Reasoning of non- and pre-linguistic creatures: How much do the experiments tell us?Sanja Sreckovic - 2018 - Belgrade Philosophical Annual 31:115-126.If a conclusion was reached that creatures without a language capability exhibit some form of a capability for logic, this would shed a new light on the relationship between logic, language, and thought. Recent experimental attempts to test whether some animals, as well as pre-linguistic human infants, are capable of exclusionary reasoning are taken to support exactly that conclusion. The paper discusses the analyses and conclusions of two such studies: Call’s (2004) two cups task, and Mody and Carey’s (2016) four (...)
- In defence of single-premise closure.Weng Hong Tang - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (8):1887-1900.It’s often thought that the phenomenon of risk aggregation poses a problem for multi-premise closure but not for single-premise closure. But recently, Lasonen-Aarnio and Schechter have challenged this thought. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that, insofar as risk aggregation poses a problem for multi-premise closure, it poses a similar problem for single-premise closure. For she thinks that, there being such a thing as deductive risk, risk may aggregate over a single premise and the deduction itself. Schechter argues that single-premise closure succumbs to risk (...)
- On the justification of deduction and induction.Franz Huber - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (3):507-534.The thesis of this paper is that we can justify induction deductively relative to one end, and deduction inductively relative to a different end. I will begin by presenting a contemporary variant of Hume ’s argument for the thesis that we cannot justify the principle of induction. Then I will criticize the responses the resulting problem of induction has received by Carnap and Goodman, as well as praise Reichenbach ’s approach. Some of these authors compare induction to deduction. Haack compares (...)
- Reliable deduction.Luis Rosa - 2017 - Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 62 (3):725.Neste artigo trato da questão sobre o que torna uma dedução confiável. Uma resposta satisfatória a tal questão nos ajudaria a entender como dedução pode expandir ou gerar conhecimento. Eu exploro duas respostas a tal questão. A primeira faz uso da noção de acarretamento lógico-formal, enquanto que a segunda faz uso da noção de acarretamento metafísico. A última é superior à primeira, pois nos permite explicar a confiabilidade de uma classe mais ampla de deduções.
- Reasoning Without Blinders: A Reply to Valaris.Sinan Dogramaci - 2016 - Mind 125 (499):889-893.I object to Markos Valaris’s thesis that reasoning requires a belief that your conclusion follows from your premisses. My counter-examples highlight the important but neglected role of suppositional reasoning in the basis of so much of what we know.
- Chains of Inferences and the New Paradigm in the Psychology of Reasoning.Ulf Hlobil - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1):1-16.The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning draws on Bayesian formal frameworks, and some advocates of the new paradigm think of these formal frameworks as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference. I argue that Bayesian theories should not be seen as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference, where by “Bayesian theories” I mean theories that claim that all rational credal states are probabilistically coherent and that rational adjustments of degrees of belief in the light of (...)
- Why Simpler Arguments are Better.Moti Mizrahi - 2016 - Argumentation 30 (3):247-261.In this paper, I argue that, other things being equal, simpler arguments are better. In other words, I argue that, other things being equal, it is rational to prefer simpler arguments over less simple ones. I sketch three arguments in support of this claim: an argument from mathematical proofs, an argument from scientific theories, and an argument from the conjunction rule.
- Logical Inference and Its Dynamics.Carlotta Pavese - 2016 - In Olivier Roy, Allard Tamminga & Malte Willer (eds.), Deontic Logic and Normative Systems. London, UK: College Publications. pp. 203-219.This essay advances and develops a dynamic conception of inference rules and uses it to reexamine a long-standing problem about logical inference raised by Lewis Carroll’s regress.
- Deductive Reasoning Under Uncertainty: A Water Tank Analogy.Guy Politzer - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (3):479-506.This paper describes a cubic water tank equipped with a movable partition receiving various amounts of liquid used to represent joint probability distributions. This device is applied to the investigation of deductive inferences under uncertainty. The analogy is exploited to determine by qualitative reasoning the limits in probability of the conclusion of twenty basic deductive arguments (such as Modus Ponens, And-introduction, Contraposition, etc.) often used as benchmark problems by the various theoretical approaches to reasoning under uncertainty. The probability bounds imposed (...)
- The New Riddle of Induction and the New Riddle of Deduction.Gal Yehezkel - 2016 - Acta Analytica 31 (1):31-41.Many believe that Goodman’s new riddle of induction proves the impossibility of a purely syntactical theory of confirmation. After discussing and rejecting Jackson’s solution to Goodman’s paradox, I formulate the “new riddle of deduction,” in analogy to the new riddle of induction. Since it is generally agreed that deductive validity can be defined syntactically, the new riddle of induction equally does not show that inductive validity cannot be defined syntactically. I further rely on the analogy between induction and deduction in (...)
- The prospects of working memory training for improving deductive reasoning.Erin L. Beatty & Oshin Vartanian - 2015 - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9.
- The Epistemic Significance of Valid Inference – A Model-Theoretic Approach.Constantin C. Brîncuș - 2015 - In Sorin Costreie & Mircea Dumitru (eds.), Meaning and Truth. Pro Universitaria. pp. 11-36.The problem analysed in this paper is whether we can gain knowledge by using valid inferences, and how we can explain this process from a model-theoretic perspective. According to the paradox of inference (Cohen & Nagel 1936/1998, 173), it is logically impossible for an inference to be both valid and its conclusion to possess novelty with respect to the premises. I argue in this paper that valid inference has an epistemic significance, i.e., it can be used by an agent to (...)
- Why Is a Valid Inference a Good Inference?Sinan Dogramaci - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (1):61-96.True beliefs and truth-preserving inferences are, in some sense, good beliefs and good inferences. When an inference is valid though, it is not merely truth-preserving, but truth-preserving in all cases. This motivates my question: I consider a Modus Ponens inference, and I ask what its validity in particular contributes to the explanation of why the inference is, in any sense, a good inference. I consider the question under three different definitions of ‘case’, and hence of ‘validity’: the orthodox definition given (...)
- The Psychology of Deductive Reasoning (Psychology Revivals).Jonathan Evans - 2015 - Psychology Press.Originally published in 1982, this was an extensive and up-to-date review of research into the psychology of deductive reasoning, Jonathan Evans presents an alternative theoretical framework to the rationalist approach which had dominated much of the published work in this field at the time. The review falls into three sections. The first is concerned with elementary reasoning tasks, in which response latency is the prime measure of interest. The second and third sections are concerned with syllogistic and propositional reasoning respectively, (...)
- Denying antecedents and affirming consequents: The state of the art.David Godden & Frank Zenker - 2015 - Informal Logic 35 (1):88-134.Recent work on conditional reasoning argues that denying the antecedent [DA] and affirming the consequent [AC] are defeasible but cogent patterns of argument, either because they are effective, rational, albeit heuristic applications of Bayesian probability, or because they are licensed by the principle of total evidence. Against this, we show that on any prevailing interpretation of indicative conditionals the premises of DA and AC arguments do not license their conclusions without additional assumptions. The cogency of DA and AC inferences rather (...)
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