Inference

In a series of papers over the past twenty years, and in a new book, Igor Douven has argued that Bayesians are too quick to reject versions of inference to the best explanation that cannot be accommodated within their framework. In this paper, I survey their worries and attempt to answer them using a series of pragmatic and purely epistemic arguments that I take to show that Bayes’ Rule really is the only rational way to respond to your evidence.

The philosophy of mind is traditionally concerned with the study of mental processes, language, the representation of knowledge and the relation of the mind shares with the body; computational complexity theory is related to the classification of computationally solvable problems (be it via execution time, storage requirements, etc...). While there are well-established links between computer science in general & the philosophy of mind, many possible solutions to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind have not yet been analyzed from the (...) more specific lens of computational complexity theory. In his paper "Why Philosophers Should Care about Computational Complexity", Scott Aaronson argues that many conventional theories of epistemology & mind implicitly make the presupposition of omniscience (by supposing that knowing base facts means a knower necessarily understands derivative facts) - he proposes that computational complexity theory could explain why this is not the case. In this paper, I argue for a theory of mental representation & epistemology compatible with Aaronson's observations on complexity theory, overcoming that presupposition of omniscience. (shrink)

Counterfactual reasoning has always played a role in human life. We ask questions like, “Could it have been different?”, “Under which conditions might/would it have been different?”, “What would have happened if…?” If we don’t find an answer, i.e. what we accept as an answer, we may start reasoning. Reasoning means introducing still new information/assumptions, new questions, new answers to new questions etc. From a formal point of view, it may be compared with stepwise moving towards a destination in a (...) path-system, in which you never fully have an overview. In this way, reasoning is an activity, with its own rationale, which will be studied from the agent’s own perspective. Questions include: What are the conditions where asking that specific question, or introducing this information/assumption, etc. will count as a reasonable step or progress towards the answer of the initial question? What makes this step more reasonable than another? (shrink)

Tyler Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in ‘Content Preservation’ in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2009. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of ‘entitlement’ in Burge, and then focuses on his distinction between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consists in the exercise of a reliable belief-forming competence. Since he (...) draws the distinction in terms of reasons, this chapter brings his account of reasons altogether in one place. The chapter introduces a decision-procedure for classifying warrants as justifications or entitlements. The distinction between justification and entitlement is not the same as the inferential vs. non-inferential distinction. The chapter distinguishes inference from processing, thinking, reasoning, and critically reasoning. Burge’s new formulation of the distinction was driven by the recognition of non-accessible modular reasons. Three kinds of access are distinguished. (shrink)

I will argue that a person is causally responsible for believing what she does. Through inference, she can sustain and change her perspective on the world. When she draws an inference, she causes herself to keep or to change her take on things. In a literal sense, she makes up her own mind as to how things are. And, I will suggest, she can do this voluntarily. It is in part because she is causally responsible for believing what she does (...) that there are things that she ought to believe, and that what she believes can be to her credit or discredit. I won’t pursue these ethical matters here, but will focus instead on the metaphysics that underpin them. (shrink)

A familiar puzzle about self-deception concerns how self-deception is possible in light of the paradoxes generated by a plausible way of defining it. A less familiar puzzle concerns how a certain type of self-deception—being self-deceived about one's own intentional mental state—is possible in light of a plausible way of understanding the nature of self-knowledge. According to this understanding, we ordinarily do not infer our mental states from evidence, but then it's puzzling how this sort of self-deception could occur given that (...) self-deception arises from the mistreatment of evidence. This article argues that to accommodate this kind of self-deception we should accept that sometimes ordinary self-knowledge is inferential, but that this idea needn’t be so unappealing. In particular, by showing that such inferential self-knowledge can be both ‘transparent’ and ‘direct’, the article argues that it need not imply having an abnormal, ‘alienated’ relation to the mental state. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links and (...) transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

This paper does four things. First it lays out an orthodox position on reasons and defeaters. Then it argues that the position just laid out is mistaken about “undercutting” defeaters. Then the paper explains an unpublished thought experiment by Dorothy Edgington. And then it uses that thought experiment to motivate a new approach to undercutting defeaters.

In Intention, Anscombe says that practical reasoning is practical, not by virtue of its content, but rather by virtue of its form. But in her later essay ‘Practical Inference’, she seems to take this back, claiming instead that (1) the practicality of practical reasoning (or inference) resides in the distinctive use it makes of the premises, and (2) ‘it is a matter of indifference’ whether we say that it exemplifies a distinctive form. I aim to show that Anscombe is right (...) about (1) but wrong about (2): the distinctive use (or teleology) of practical reasoning explains its distinctive formal features, and when the former is thought through, the latter are revealed to be more numerous and significant than Anscombe seems to recognize. (shrink)

It has been argued that an advantage of the safety account over the sensitivity account is that the safety account preserves epistemic closure, while the sensitivity account implies epistemic closu...

The goal of this essay is to evaluate the claim that it is possible to acquire inferential knowledge from false belief. In order to do so, we explain the main problem and some preliminaries notions in the first chapter. In the second chapter, we evaluate the reasons against the possibility of knowledge from falsehood. In the final chapter, we examine the reasons for the possibility of knowledge from falsehood.

In ‘Reichenbach's cubical universe and the problem of the external world’, Elliott Sober attempts a refutation of solipsism à la Reichenbach. I here contrast Sober's line of argument with observati...

What does logic tells us how about we ought to reason? If P entails Q, and I believe P, should I believe Q? I will argue that we should embed the issue in an independently motivated contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, with parameters for a standard and set of propositions. With the contextualist machinery in hand, we can defend a strong principle expressing how agents ought to reason while accommodating conflicting intuitions. I then show how our judgments about blame and guidance (...) can be handled by this machinery. (shrink)

This chapter presents a typology of the different kinds of inductive inferences we can draw from our evidence, based on the explanatory relationship between evidence and conclusion. Drawing on the literature on graphical models of explanation, I divide inductive inferences into (a) downwards inferences, which proceed from cause to effect, (b) upwards inferences, which proceed from effect to cause, and (c) sideways inferences, which proceed first from effect to cause and then from that cause to an additional effect. I further (...) distinguish between direct and indirect forms of downwards and upwards inferences. I then show how we can subsume canonical forms of inductive inference mentioned in the literature, such as inference to the best explanation, enumerative induction, and analogical inference, under this typology. Along the way, I explore connections with probability and confirmation, epistemic defeat, the relation between abduction and enumerative induction, the compatibility of IBE and Bayesianism, and theories of epistemic justification. (shrink)

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.

Recent epistemology of modality has seen a growing trend towards metaphysics-first approaches. Contrastingly, this paper offers a more philosophically modest account of justifying modal claims, focusing on the practices of scientific modal inferences. Two ways of making such inferences are identified and analyzed: actualist-manipulationist modality and relative modality. In AM, what is observed to be or not to be the case in actuality or under manipulations, allows us to make modal inferences. AM-based inferences are fallible, but the same holds for (...) practically all empirical inquiry. In RM, modal inferences are evaluated relative to what is kept fixed in a system, like a theory or a model. RM-based inferences are more certain but framework-dependent. While elements from both AM and RM can be found in some existing accounts of modality, it is worth highlighting them in their own right and isolating their features for closer scrutiny. This helps to establish their relevant epistemologies that are free from some strong philosophical assumptions often attached to them in the literature. We close by showing how combining these two routes amounts to a view that accounts for a rich variety of modal inferences in science. (shrink)

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 (...) or ability to preserve truth from premise to conclusion? My goal in this paper is to explain how Universal Generalization works in a way that makes sense of its ability to preserve truth. In doing so, I shall review common accounts of Universal Generalization and explain why they are inadequate or are explanatorily unsatisfying. Happily, my account makes no ontological or epistemological presumptions and therefore should be compatible with whichever ontological or epistemological schemes the reader prefers. (shrink)

Many hold that theoretical reasoning aims at truth. In this paper, I ask what it is for reasoning to be thus aim-directed. Standard answers to this question explain reasoning’s aim-directedness in terms of intentions, dispositions, or rule-following. I argue that, while these views contain important insights, they are not satisfactory. As an alternative, I introduce and defend a novel account: reasoning aims at truth in virtue of being the exercise of a distinctive kind of cognitive power, one that, unlike ordinary (...) dispositions, is capable of fully explaining its own exercises. I argue that this account is able to avoid the difficulties plaguing standard accounts of the relevant sort of mental teleology. (shrink)

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.

Is imagination a source of knowledge? Timothy Williamson has recently argued that our imaginative capacities can yield knowledge of a variety of matters, spanning from everyday practical matters to logic and set theory. Furthermore, imagination for Williamson plays a similar epistemic role in cognitive processes that we would traditionally classify as either a priori or a posteriori, which he takes to indicate that the distinction itself is shallow and epistemologically fruitless. In this chapter, I aim to defend the a priori-a (...) posteriori distinction from Williamson’s challenge by questioning his account of imagination. I distinguish two notions of imagination at play in Williamson’s account – sensory vs. belief-like imagination – and show that both face empirical and normative issues. Sensory imagination seems neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Whereas, belief-like imagination isn’t adequately disentangled from inference. Additionally, Williamson’s examples are ad hoc and don’t generalize. I conclude that Williamson’s case against the a priori-a posteriori distinction is unconvincing, and so is the thesis that imagination is an epistemic source. (shrink)

It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person's beliefs. Here, Eric Marcus argues that the unity of the rational mind--what makes it one mind--is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can't believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special (...) sense. What explains this is that beliefs, and the inferences by which we acquire them, are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness. (shrink)

We review some of the major accounts in the current epistemology of modality and identify some shared issues that plague all of them. In order to provide insight into the nature of modal statements in science, philosophy, and beyond, a satisfactory epistemology of modality would need to be suitably applicable to practical and theoretical contexts by limited beings. However, many epistemologies of modality seem to work only when we have access to the kind of knowledge that is at least currently (...) beyond our reach. Or, in the extreme case, it is argued that even if we knew all the relevant information about the respective domain – or even the entire state of the world – there would still remain a special class of modal truths that would be left unaccounted for. Neither picture bodes well for practical applicability, nor for the philosophical justification of these epistemologies. This is especially the case as we hold that one of the main motivations for modal inquiry typically arises in cases of imperfect information and limited cognitive resources. We close by providing a partial remedy to the situation by suggesting an overall framework of relative modality (RM) that can be used to both unify some existing modal epistemologies and, at the same time, make them more metaphysically modest. (shrink)

Epistemologists routinely distinguish between two kinds of justification or rationality – the propositional and the doxastic kind – in order to characterize importantly different ways in which an attitude can be justified or rational for a person. I argue that these notions, as they are commonly understood, are well suited to capture rationality judgments about the attitudes that agents reach as conclusions of their reasoning. Yet, these notions are ill-suited to capture rationality judgments about attitudes that agents form while their (...) reasoning is still in progress. In fact, we currently lack any suitable theory of rationality that lets us capture the ways in which we evaluate the rationality of such transitional attitudes, even though they are ubiquitous. I propose to capture these rationality judgments by introducing a new notion of rationality that is orthogonal to the propositional/doxastic distinction, which I call pro tem rationality. This new notion can be integrated with both traditional and formal ways of characterizing rationality or justification. It can be used to enlighten debates about logical and empirical learning, higher-order evidence, and the epistemology of philosophy, among others. (shrink)

Our relationship to the infinite is controversial. But it is widely agreed that our powers of reasoning are finite. I disagree with this consensus; I think that we can, and perhaps do, engage in infinite reasoning. Many think it is just obvious that we can't reason infinitely. This is mistaken. Infinite reasoning does not require constructing infinitely long proofs, nor would it gift us with non-recursive mental powers. To reason infinitely we only need an ability to perform infinite inferences. I (...) argue that we have this ability. My argument looks to our best current theories of inference and considers examples of apparent infinite reasoning. My position is controversial, but if I'm right, our theories of truth, mathematics, and beyond could be transformed. And even if I'm wrong, a more careful consideration of infinite reasoning can only deepen our understanding of thinking and reasoning. -/- (Note for readers: the paper's brief discussion of uniform reflection and omega inconsistency is misleading. The imagined interlocutor's argument makes an assumption about the PA-provability of provability generalizations that, while true for the Godel sentence's instances, is unjustified, in general. This means my position is stronger against this objection than the paper suggests, since omega inconsistent theories are not automatically inconsistent with their uniform reflection principles, you also need to assume the arithmetically true Pi-2 sentences.). (shrink)

A growing cohort of philosophers argue that inference, understood as an agent-level psychological process or event, is subject to a “Taking Condition.” The Taking Condition states, roughly, that drawing an inference requires one to take one’s premise(s) to epistemically support one’s conclusion, where “takings” are some sort of higher-order attitude, thought, intuition, or act. My question is not about the nature of takings, but about their contents. I examine the prospects for “minimal” and “robust” views of the contents of takings. (...) On the minimal view, taking one’s premise(s) to support one’s conclusion only requires focusing on propositional contents and putative epistemic support relations between them. On the robust view, taking one’s premise(s) to support one’s conclusion also requires knowledge (or being in a position to have knowledge) of the attitudes one holds toward those contents. I argue that arguments for the Taking Condition do not entail or sufficiently motivate the robust view. Accordingly, contra several philosophers, the Taking Condition does not illuminate a deep relationship between inference and self-knowledge. (shrink)

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one’s belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the target belief when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that, if we should only examine the target belief, then the account fails to account for ignorance of necessary truths. But, if we should also examine beliefs in other relevant (...) propositions, then the account fails to account for knowledge from falsehood. Therefore, the safety account of knowledge is undermined by knowledge from falsehood and ignorance of necessary truths. (shrink)

How should we respond to evidence when our evidence indicates that we are rationally impaired? I will defend a novel answer based on the analogy between self-doubt and memory loss. To believe that one is now impaired and previously was not is to believe that one’s epistemic position has deteriorated. Memory loss is also a form of epistemic deterioration. I argue that agents who suffer from epistemic deterioration should return to the priors they had at an earlier time. I develop (...) this argument regarding memory loss then extend it to cases of self-doubt. (shrink)

The way in which philosophers have thought about the scientific method and the nature of good scientific reasoning over the last few centuries has been consistently and heavily influenced by the examples set by physics. The astounding achievements of 19th and 20th century physics demonstrated that physicists had successfully identified methodologies and reasoning patterns that were uniquely well suited to discovering fundamental truths about the natural world. Inspired by this success, generations of philosophers set themselves the goal of taxonomising, codifying, (...) formalising and evaluating these reasoning patterns. Many will concede that this has been a tremendously fruitful exercise that has served both to illuminate characteristic methodological and epistemological features of the physical sciences, and to inform the way that philosophers think about the epistemic ideals served by science more generally. However, as has been widely noted, the great challenges confronted by contemporary physics have led to a number of fundamental shifts in the way that physicists formulate, assess and apply their theories of the physical world. The most prominent examples of this trend occur in the realm of theoretical high energy physics, where many of the most influential theories advocated by physicists lie beyond the reach of extant experimental methods, and are therefore extremely difficult to test empirically. The fact that whole communities of physicists have devoted so much time and effort to evaluating theories that are largely disconnected from experiments and empirical testing suggests that existing philosophical accounts of the epistemology of physics, based as they are on a broadly empiricist conception of physics, are no longer completely apt, or are at least somewhat out of date. This in turn suggests that it is time for philosophers to redirect their attention towards the characteristic reasoning strategies at play in contemporary physics. As well as clarifying the epistemic structure of 21st century physics and providing new stimulation for general debates surrounding the epistemology of science, this will also allow more philosophers to confront and engage with the existential methodological debates currently raging within physics. There is currently intense and wide spread disagreement surrounding what kinds of reasoning strategies can legitimately be employed in the assessment of competing physical theories and research programs. This special issue aims to facilitate the further engagement of philosophers in this crucial debate by collecting eight contributions that both highlight the deep philosophical issues at stake in debates surrounding the proper methodology for theory assessment in physics, and present novel philosophical perspectives on specific reasoning strategies in the physical sciences. (shrink)

Arthâpatti is a pervasive form of reasoning investigated by Indian philosophers in order to think about unseen causes and interpret ordinary and religious language. Its nature is a point of controversy among Mimamsa, Nyaya, and Buddhist philosophers, yet, to date, it has received less attention than perception, inference, and testimony. This collection presents a one-of-a-kind reference resource for understanding this form of reasoning studied in Indian philosophy. Assembling translations of central primary texts together with newly-commissioned essays on research topics, it (...) features a significant introductory essay. Readable translations of Sanskrit works are accompanied by critical notes that introduce arthâpatti, offer historical context, and clarify the philosophical debates surrounding it. Showing how arthâpatti is used as a way to reason about the basic unseen causes driving language use, cause-and-effect relationships, as well as to interpret ambiguous or figurative texts, this book demonstrates the importance of this epistemic instrument in both contemporary Anglo-analytic and classical Indian epistemology, language, and logic. (shrink)

According to a widely shared generic conception of inferential justification—‘the standard conception’—an agent is inferentially justified in believing that p only if she has antecedently justified beliefs in all the non-redundant premises of a good argument for p. This conception tends to serve as the starting-point in contemporary debates about the nature and scope of inferential justification: as neutral common ground between various competing, more specific, conceptions. But it’s a deeply problematic starting-point. This paper explores three questions that haven’t been (...) given the attention they deserve, that complicate the application of the standard conception to cases, and that reveal it to be underspecified at the core—in ways that aren’t resolved but inherited by more specific versions of it. The goal isn’t to answer the questions, but to articulate them, explain what turns on them, and invite a critical re-examination of the standard conception. (shrink)

It is often supposed one can draw a distinction, among the assumptions on which an inference rests, between certain background assumptions and certain more salient, or foregrounded, assumptions. Yet what may such a fore-v-background structure, or such structures, consist it? In particular, how do they relate to consciousness? According to a ‘Boring View’, such structures can be captured by specifying, for the various assumptions of the inference, whether they are phenomenally conscious, or access conscious, or else how easily available they (...) are to such consciousness. According to an ‘Interesting View’, there are fore-v-background structures over and above such classifications. The chapter gestures at reasons for thinking that an Interesting View at least merits exploration. The paper discusses some recent contributions to such a view in analytical philosophy; some remarks in Husserl on what he dubbed the horizonal dimension of acts of consciousness; and psychological work on the role of gist or schema representations in perception and memory. It is proposed that background assumptions can figure in consciousness by being as it were condensed into a consciously, though inattentively, entertained notion of their overall thematic gist, where this thematic gist gives the drift of a possible elucidation of how or why such-and-such salient grounds mean that so-and-so conclusion holds. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

Rationalization through reduction of cognitive dissonance does not have the function of representational exchange. Instead, cognitive dissonance is part of the “psychological immune system” and functions to protect the self-concept against evidence of incompetence, immorality, and instability. The irrational forms of attitude change that protect the self-concept in dissonance reduction are useful primarily for maintaining motivation.

My replies to Errol Lord, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton's commentaries on The Rationality of Perception (2017).

Entende-se que os experimentos mentais são dispositivos da imaginação que podem nos fornecer crenças que constituem conhecimento. John D. Norton apresentou uma abordagem que se tornou influente para explicar como os experimentos mentais científicos podem produzir novos conhecimentos so- bre o mundo. Ele afirma que não há nada distintivo nos experimentos men- tais, uma vez que sustenta que eles funcionam exatamente como argumen- tos. Neste artigo, contestamos sua abordagem. Examinamos aspectos essen- ciais de sua abordagem, que envolvem as noções de (...) “argumento” e “inferên- cia” para mostrar que um sujeito que chega a saber algo através da execução ou condução de um experimento mental dificilmente será considerado como tendo efetivamente executado um argumento ou um processo de raciocínio inferencial. (shrink)

This new volume addresses the central questions which surround the process of reasoning. This emerging topic of analytic philosophy intersects with numerous other areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and metaethics, and also psychological work on reasoning.

In Lehrer’s case of the superstitious lawyer, a lawyer possesses conclusive evidence for his client’s innocence, and he appreciates that the evidence is conclusive, but the evidence is causally inert with respect to his belief in his client’s innocence. This case has divided epistemologists ever since Lehrer originally proposed it in his argument against causal analyses of knowledge. Some have taken the claim that the lawyer bases his belief on the evidence as a data point for our theories to accommodate, (...) while others have denied that the lawyer has knowledge, or that he bases his belief on the evidence. In this paper, we move the dialectic forward by way of arguing that the superstitious lawyer genuinely infers his client’s innocence from the evidence. To show that the lawyer’s inference is genuine, we argue in defense of a version of a doxastic construal of the ‘taking’ condition on inference. We also provide a pared-down superstitious lawyer-style case, which displays the key features of the original case without including its complicated and distracting features. But interestingly, although we argue that the lawyer’s belief is based on his good evidence, and is also plausibly doxastically justified, we do not argue that the lawyer knows that his client is innocent. (shrink)

Coordination in thought is the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. Such treatment can be indirect, via an identity belief, or direct. Direct coordination presents a problem concerning how this treatment is justified. Dickie accounts for the justification of coordination in terms of aptness to a motivational state: coordination serves to fulfil a need to represent things outside the mind. I argue that this account gets the problem coordination presents wrong, and so does not (...) present an adequate solution. While the material of that account may be reconfigured to provide a more promising proposal, I argue that this depends on a specious psychology of belief, and will anyway end up being circular. I propose an account that, while similar in some ways, improves on both the official and reconfigured Dickie-style accounts, and points to some broader conclusions about the nature of rational cognition. (shrink)

The problem I address is: how are cogent inferences possible? In § 1 I distinguish three senses in which we say that one is “compelled” by an inference: automatic, seductive-rhetorical and epistemic compulsion. Cogency is epistemic compulsion: a cogent inference compels us to accept its conclusion, if we accept its premises and we aim at truth. In §§ 2–3 I argue that cogency is intelligible if we consider an inference as a compound linguistic act in which several component acts are (...) related to one another by a commitment that the premises support the conclusion. Non-automatic inferences are primarily public acts in an intersubjective context. But cogency arises in special contexts described in § 4, epistemic contexts, where the participants care for truth, i.e. are intellectually virtuous. An inference is cogent in an epistemic context if it stands up to all the objections raised in the context. In § 5 I consider three different kinds of cogent inferences. In § 6 I argue that in all three cases cogency is fallible and propose a fallibilist variety of inferentialism. In § 7 I distinguish context of utterance and contexts of evaluation. Cogency is relative to epistemic contexts of evaluation. However, validity, i.e. stable cogency, is transcontextual. (shrink)

While we can judge and believe things by merely accepting testimony, we cannot make inferences by merely accepting testimony. A good theory of inference should explain this. The theories that are best suited to explain this fact seem to be theories that accept a so-called intuitional construal of Boghossian’s Taking Condition.

According to McHugh and Way reasoning is a person-level attitude revision that is regulated by its constitutive aim of getting fitting attitudes. They claim that this account offers an explanation of what is wrong with reasoning in ways one believes to be bad and that this explanation is an alternative to an explanation that appeals to the so-called Taking Condition. I argue that their explanation is unsatisfying.

The paper offers an account of inference. The account underwrites the idea that inference requires that the reasoner takes her premises to support her conclusion. I reject views according to which such ‘takings’ are intuitions or beliefs. I sketch an alternative view on which inferring consists in attaching what I call ‘inferential force’ to a structured collection of contents.

This thesis brings together two concerns. The first is the nature of inference—what it is to infer—where inference is understood as a distinctive kind of conscious and self-conscious occurrence. The second concern is the possibility of doxastic agency. To be capable of doxastic agency is to be such that one is capable of directly exercising agency over one’s beliefs. It is to be capable of exercising agency over one’s beliefs in a way which does not amount to mere self-manipulation. Subjects (...) who can exercise doxastic agency can settle questions for themselves. A challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency stems from the fact that we cannot believe or come to believe “at will”, where this in turn seems to be so because belief “aims at truth”. It must be explained how we are capable of doxastic agency despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will. On the orthodox ‘causalist’ conception of inference for an inference to occur is for one act of acceptance to cause another in some specifiable “right way”. This conception of inference prevents its advocates from adequately seeing how reasoning could be a means to exercise doxastic agency, as it is natural to think it is. Suppose, for instance, that one reasons and concludes by inferring where one’s inference yields belief in what one infers. Such an inference cannot be performed at will. We cannot infer at will when inference yields belief any more than we can believe or come to believe at will. When it comes to understanding the extent to which one could be exercising agency in such a case the causalist conception of inference suggests that we must look to the causal history of one’s concluding act of acceptance, the nature of the act’s being determined by the way in which it is caused. What results is a picture on which such reasoning as a whole cannot be action. We are at best capable of actions of a kind which lead causally to belief fixation through “mental ballistics”. The causalist account of inference, I argue, is in fact either inadequate or unmotivated. It either fails to accommodate the self-consciousness of inference or is not best placed to play the very explanatory role which it is put forward to play. On the alternative I develop when one infers one’s inference is the conscious event which is one’s act of accepting that which one is inferring. The act’s being an inference is determined, not by the way it is caused, but by the self-knowledge which it constitutively involves. This corrected understanding of inference renders the move from the challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency to the above ballistics picture no longer tempting. It also yields an account of how we are capable of exercising doxastic agency by reasoning despite being unable to believe or come to believe at will. In order to see how such reasoning could amount to the exercise of doxastic agency it needs to be conceived of appropriately. I suggest that paradigm reasoning which potentially amounts the exercise of doxastic agency ought to be conceived of as primarily epistemic agency—agency the aim of which is knowledge. With inference conceived as suggested, I argue, it can be seen how to engage in such reasoning can just be to successfully exercise such agency. (shrink)

According to the good reasoning view of normative reasons, p is a reason to F, just in case p is a premise of a good pattern of reasoning. This article presents two counterexamples to the most promising version of the good reasoning view.

Phenomenal conservatism (PC) is the internalist view that non-inferential justification rests on appearances. PC’s advocates have recently argued that seemings are also required to explain inferential justification. The most general and developed view to this effect is Huemer (2016)’s theory of inferential seemings (ToIS). Moretti (2018) has shown that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness, which makes PC open to sceptical challenges. In this paper I argue that ToIS is afflicted by a version of the same problem (...) and it is thus hostage to inferential scepticism. I also suggest a possible response on behalf of ToIS’s advocates. (shrink)

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)

What happens when we reason our way from one proposition to another? This process is usually called “inference” and this chapter examines its nature. It revisits the author’s earlier attempts to explain the nature of the process of inference, and tries to further clarify why we need the type of “intellectualist” account of that process that he has been pursuing. In the course of doing so, the chapter traces some unexpected connections between our topic and the distinction between a priori (...) and a posteriori justification, and tries to draw some general methodological morals about the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Some believe that all arguments make an implicit “inference claim” that the conclusion is inferable from the premises (e.g., Bermejo-Luque, Grennan, the Groarkes, Hitchcock, Scriven). I try to show that this is confused. An act of arguing arises because an inference can be attributed to us, not a meta-level “inference claim” that would make the argument self-referential and regressive. I develop six (other) possible explanations of the popularity of the doctrine that similarly identify confusions.

In this paper I explore alternative ways of addressing the infinite regress problem of inference, as it was depicted in Lewis Carroll’s ‘What the Tortoise said to Achilles’. Roughly put, the problem is that if a claim to the effect that one’s premises give support to one’s conclusion must itself be part of one’s premises, then an infinite regress of reasons ensues. I discuss some recent attempts to solve that problem, but I find all of them to be wanting. Those (...) attempts either require the reasoner to believe that her premises give support to her conclusion, or to take her premises to give support to her conclusion, where taking is not a doxastic attitude. I conclude that, on the face of the failure of those attempts to solve the problem, there is a strong prima facie case for allowing inference to be blind. (shrink)

I argue that inference can tolerate forms of self-ignorance and that these cases of inference undermine canonical models of inference on which inferrers have to appreciate (or purport to appreciate) the support provided by the premises for the conclusion. I propose an alternative model of inference that belongs to a family of rational responses in which the subject cannot pinpoint exactly what she is responding to or why, where this kind of self-ignorance does nothing to undermine the intelligence of the (...) response. (shrink)