This paper argues that inference rule adoption is a diachronic process during which agents are inferentially guided by a statement of the rule they are adopting, but during which they do not use that rule. Rather, the ability to use the rule is the outcome at the end of the process. This account avoids a regress objection to inferentially guided adoption recently posed by Boghossian and Wright. Adoption, on this model, involves the use of six privileged inference (...) class='Hi'>rules, including universal instantiation, modus ponens, and the naive truth rules. However, though these rules play a special role in adoption, they are not indispensable to the process in their full generality: so long as one has reasonably robust restrictions of them, the adoption process is unimpeded. Furthermore, there are no general forms that constitute the minimal restrictions of these rules required for adoption. It follows that these rules, in their fully generality, are themselves adoptable, so long as one begins with reasonable restrictions of them. It is argued that this is enough to overcome the ‘adoption problem’ as a challenge to anti-exceptionalism about logic and to the normative significance of proposals for alternative logics. (shrink)

A background assumption of this paper is that the repertoire of inference schemes available to humanity is not fixed, but subject to change as new schemes are invented or refined and as old ones are obsolesced or abandoned. This is particularly visible in areas like health and environmental sciences, where enormous societal investment has been made in finding ways to reach more dependable conclusions. Computational modeling of argumentation, at least for the discourse in expert fields, will require the possibility (...) of modeling change in a stock of schemes that may be applied to generate conclusions from data. We examine Randomized Clinical Trial, an inference scheme established within medical science in the mid-20th Century, and show that its successful defense by means of practical reasoning allowed for its black-boxing as an inference scheme that generates (and warrants belief in) conclusions about the effects of medical treatments. Modeling the use of a scheme is well-understood; here we focus on modeling how the scheme comes to be established so that it is available for use. (shrink)

In their Introduction to Logic, Copi and Cohen suggest that students construct a formal proof by "working backwards from the conclusion by looking for some statement or statements from which it can be deduced and then trying to deduce those intermediate statements from the premises. What follows is an elaboration of this suggestion. I describe an almost mechanical procedure for determining from which statement(s) the conclusion can be deduced and the rules by which the required inferences can be made. (...) This method is designed to forestall the quandary in which many beginners find themselves: not knowing how to get started. (shrink)

A certain type of inference rules in modal logics, generalizing Gabbay's Irreflexivity rule, is introduced and some general completeness results about modal logics axiomatized with such rules are proved.

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 by taking account of his holistic construal of the relation between inference and understanding. (shrink)

In the theory of meaning, it is common to contrast truth-conditional theories of meaning with theories which identify the meaning of an expression with its use. One rather exact version of the somewhat vague use-theoretic picture is the view that the standard rules of inference determine the meanings of logical constants. Often this idea also functions as a paradigm for more general use-theoretic approaches to meaning. In particular, the idea plays a key role in the anti-realist program of (...) Dummett and his followers. In the theory of truth, a key distinction now is made between substantial theories and minimalist or deflationist views. According to the former, truth is a genuine substantial property of the truth-bearers, whereas according to the latter, truth does not have any deeper essence, but all that can be said about truth is contained in T-sentences (sentences having the form: ‘P’ is true if and only if P). There is no necessary analytic connection between the above theories of meaning and truth, but they have nevertheless some connections. Realists often favour some kind of truth-conditional theory of meaning and a substantial theory of truth (in particular, the correspondence theory). Minimalists and deflationists on truth characteristically advocate the use theory of meaning (e.g. Horwich). Semantical anti-realism (e.g. Dummett, Prawitz) forms an interesting middle case: its starting point is the use theory of meaning, but it usually accepts a substantial view on truth, namely that truth is to be equated with verifiability or warranted assertability. When truth is so understood, it is also possible to accept the idea that meaning is closely related to truth-conditions, and hence the conflict between use theories and truth-conditional theories in a sense disappears in this view. (shrink)

It is often argued that inferential role semantics (IRS) entails semantic holism as long as theorists fail to answer the question about which inferences, among the many, are meaning-constitutive. Since analyticity, as truth in virtue of meaning, is a widely dismissed notion in indicating which inferences determine meaning, it seems that holism follows. Semantic holism is often understood as facing problems with the stability of content and many usual explanations of communication. Thus, we should choose between giving up IRS, to (...) avoid these holistic entailments, and defending holism against this charge, to rescue IRS. I try to pursue the second goal by analyzing certain patterns of counterfactual reasoning. Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom claim that, to defend IRS, content-constitutive inferences are those counterfactually robust. While it is difficult to assess the goodness of such a view, it nonetheless entails that counterfactually non-robust inferences (which I call “modally ruled out inferences”) are not content-constitutive. If this is true, and if we take certain remarks about the grasp of concepts on board, there is a way to restrict the scope of the holism entailed by IRS to the extent of reshaping problems with the stability of content. (shrink)

The “Game of the Rule” is easy enough: I give you the beginning of a sequence of numbers (say) and you have to figure out how the sequence continues, to uncover the rule by means of which the sequence is generated. The game depends on two obvious constraints, namely (1) that the initial segment uniquely identify the sequence, and (2) that the sequence be non-random. As it turns out, neither constraint can fully be met, among other reasons because the relevant (...) notion of randomness is either vacuous or undecidable. This may not be a problem when we play for fun. It is, however, a serious problem when it comes to playing the game for real, i.e., when the player to issue the initial segment is not one of us but the world out there, the sequence consisting not of numbers (say) but of the events that make up our history. Moreover, when we play for fun we know exactly what initial segment to focus on, but when we play for real we don’t even know that. This is the core difficulty in the philosophy of the inductive sciences. (shrink)

This paper discusses the account of alethic modality as presented by Wilfrid Sellars in his earlier work from 1947 to 1958. Its aim is twofold. First, I discuss Sellars' analysis by exploring its historical relationship to Carnap's account of modality. I argue that Carnap's early syntactic treatment of modality profoundly influenced Sellars' own so-called ‘regulist' account of modality in terms of rules of inference. Furthermore, it is suggested that Sellars' lesser-known possible worlds analysis was influenced by Carnap's later (...) semantic account of modality. The second aim of the paper is a critical one. I raise a number of objections to Sellars’ account of modality and argue that his account confronts some serious limitations. I also argue that Sellars does not provide a satisfying explanation of the relationship between his regulist account and his possible worlds analysis. I offer such an explanation by arguing that his regulist account should be understood as a pragmatic account of what is conveyed by the use of modal sentences, whereas his possible worlds analysis is a semantic account of the asserted content of modal statements. That is, the regulist account and the possible worlds analysis have different explanatory targets. (shrink)

This paper presents a new problem for the inference rule commonly known as Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). The problem is that uncertainty about parts of one’s evidence may undermine the inferrability of a hypothesis that would provide the best explanation of that evidence, especially in cases where there is an alternative hypothesis that would provide a better explanation of only the more certain pieces of evidence. A potential solution to the problem is sketched, in which IBE (...) is generalized to handle uncertain evidence by invoking a notion of evidential robustness. (shrink)

Defenders of Inference to the Best Explanation claim that explanatory factors should play an important role in empirical inference. They disagree, however, about how exactly to formulate this role. In particular, they disagree about whether to formulate IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs or for degrees of belief, as well as how a rule for degrees of belief should relate to Bayesianism. In this essay I advance a new argument against non-Bayesian versions of IBE. My (...) argument focuses on cases in which we are concerned with multiple levels of explanation of some phenomenon. I show that in many such cases, following IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs leads to deductively inconsistent beliefs, and following IBE as a non-Bayesian updating rule for degrees of belief leads to probabilistically incoherent degrees of belief. (shrink)

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.

Many classically valid meta-inferences fail in a standard supervaluationist framework. This allegedly prevents supervaluationism from offering an account of good deductive reasoning. We provide a proof system for supervaluationist logic which includes supervaluationistically acceptable versions of the classical meta-inferences. The proof system emerges naturally by thinking of truth as licensing assertion, falsity as licensing negative assertion and lack of truth-value as licensing rejection and weak assertion. Moreover, the proof system respects well-known criteria for the admissibility of inference rules. (...) Thus, supervaluationists can provide an account of good deductive reasoning. Our proof system moreover brings to light how one can revise the standard supervaluationist framework to make room for higher-order vagueness. We prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete with respect to the consequence relation that preserves truth in a model of the non-normal modal logic _NT_. Finally, we extend our approach to a first-order setting and show that supervaluationism can treat vagueness in the same way at every order. The failure of conditional proof and other meta-inferences is a crucial ingredient in this treatment and hence should be embraced, not lamented. (shrink)

Inferentialism is a theory in the philosophy of language which claims that the meanings of expressions are constituted by inferential roles or relations. Instead of a traditional model-theoretic semantics, it naturally lends itself to a proof-theoretic semantics, where meaning is understood in terms of inference rules with a proof system. Most work in proof-theoretic semantics has focused on logical constants, with comparatively little work on the semantics of non-logical vocabulary. Drawing on Robert Brandom’s notion of material inference (...) and Greg Restall’s bilateralist interpretation of the multiple conclusion sequent calculus, I present a proof-theoretic semantics for atomic sentences and their constituent names and predicates. The resulting system has several interesting features: (1) the rules are harmonious and stable; (2) the rules create a structure analogous to familiar model-theoretic semantics; and (3) the semantics is compositional, in that the rules for atomic sentences are determined by those for their constituent names and predicates. (shrink)

Having justification for inferring a conclusion from some premises is independent of seeing how to make that inference. But if you do make the inference, then your belief in the conclusion is justified based on those premises. These natural thoughts about inference and justification generate two puzzles. One concerns logical omniscience, and the other concerns inferences to correct conclusions via fallacious rules. In this paper I introduce and develop what I call the Inferential Parsing Hypothesis as (...) a way of resolving these two puzzles. The hypothesis recruits an analogy between inferential processes and syntactic parsing processes to motivate novel epistemic theses about the nature of inferential basing. (shrink)

Elizabeth Karger has suggested an interpretation of Ockham's theory of the modes of common personal supposition ("TM") according to which the purpose of TM is to provide certain distinctions that Ockham will use in formulating a unified theory of immediate inference among certain kinds of sentences. Karger presents a single, powerful rule of inference that incorporates TM distinctions and that is meant to codify Ockham's theory of immediate inference. I raise an objection to Karger's rule, thereby calling (...) into doubt the interpretation of Ockham that is based on attributing that rule to him. (shrink)

This thesis presents Fluctuational Logic (FL), a novel logical framework designed to address the fundamental inadequacies of classical and existing non-classical logic systems when reasoning about emergent phenomena where identity, persistence, and causality are not fixed properties but emerge through dynamic processes. Through comprehensive analysis of existing approaches including classical logic, quantum logic, temporal logic, dynamic epistemic logic, paraconsistent logic, and process philosophy, this work identifies critical limitations in their capacity to model emergence adequately. -/- FL introduces the Fluctuation Principle, (...) which recognizes that truth conditions themselves undergo continuous fluctuation as emergent processes evolve. The framework employs Emergent Identity Operators (≈ₛ, ≈ₑ, ≈φ), Fluctuational Causality relations (⟹φ, ⟹?, ⟹∅), and Temporal Emergence Operators (◊ₑ, □φ, Uₑ) to capture the dynamic nature of emergent reality. The formal system includes a complete axiomatization, semantic framework based on Fluctuational Models, and inference rules specifically designed for emergent phenomena. -/- Critical comparative analysis demonstrates FL's distinctive advantages: ontological flexibility that adapts to emergent phenomena, integrated temporal-causal framework, active contradiction resolution mechanisms, and scalable complexity management. Applications to consciousness studies, complex systems modeling, and quantum emergence phenomena validate the framework's practical utility. The thesis concludes that FL provides the first comprehensive logical framework adequate for reasoning about reality where fundamental properties emerge rather than exist as fixed features. (shrink)

This paper argues for the reasonableness of an _inclusive_ conception of default reasoning. The inclusive conception allows untriggered default rules to influence beliefs: Since a default “from $$\varphi $$, infer $$\psi $$” is a defeasible inference rule, it by default warrants a belief in the material implication $$\varphi \rightarrow \psi $$, even if $$\varphi $$ is not believed. Such inferences are not allowed in standard default logic of the Reiter tradition, but are reasonable by analogy to the Deduction (...) Theorem for classical logic. Our main contribution is a formal framework for inclusive default reasoning. The framework has a solid philosophical foundation, it draws conclusions non-trivially different from non-inclusive frameworks, and it exhibits a host of benchmark properties deemed desirable in the literature—e.g., that extensions always exist and are consistent. (shrink)

This paper critically reviews Fatai Asodun’s Semantic and Critical Analysis of the Elementary Formal Rules of Deductive Inference, in which he challenges the traditional symbolic understanding of rules of inference by emphasizing their semantic grounding in human reasoning and language. Focusing on selected rules such as Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, Hypothetical Syllogism, Disjunctive Syllogism, and Simplification, Asodun questions the rigidity of formal logical procedures, particularly the conventional interpretations of necessary and sufficient conditions. This review evaluates (...) the strength of his arguments by examining whether semantic reinterpretation enhances or undermines the formal objectives of logical validity. While acknowledging the philosophical value of Asodun’s approach in bridging logic and everyday reasoning, the paper argues that excessive reliance on semantic intuition risks blurring the distinction between validity and meaning, thereby complicating the pedagogical and methodological clarity of formal logic. (shrink)

There is wide support in logic, philosophy, and psychology for the hypothesis that the probability of the indicative conditional of natural language, P(if A then B), is the conditional probability of B given A, P(B|A). We identify a conditional which is such that P(if A then B)=P(B|A) with de Finetti's conditional event, B|A. An objection to making this identification in the past was that it appeared unclear how to form compounds and iterations of conditional events. In this paper, we illustrate (...) how to overcome this objection with a probabilistic analysis, based on coherence, of these compounds and iterations. We interpret the compounds and iterations as conditional random quantities which, given some logical dependencies, may reduce to conditional events. We show how the inference to B|A from A and B can be extended to compounds and iterations of both conditional events and biconditional events. Moreover, we determine the respective uncertainty propagation rules. Finally, we make some comments on extending our analysis to counterfactuals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A traditional objection to inferentialism states that not all inferences can be meaning-constitutive and therefore inferentialism has to comprise an analytic-synthetic distinction. As a response, Peregrin argues that meaning is a matter of inferential rules and only the subset of all the valid inferences for which there is a widely shared corrective behaviour corresponds to rules and so determines meaning. Unfortunately, Peregrin does not discuss what counts as “widely shared”. In the paper, I argue for an empirical (...) plausibility of Peregrin’s proposal. The aim of the paper is to show that we can find examples of meaning-constitutive linguistic action, which sustain Peregrin’s response. The idea is supported by examples of meaning modulation. If Peregrin is right, then we should be able to find specific meaning modulations in which a new meaning is publicly available and modulated in such a way that it has a potential to be widely shared. I believe that binding modulations – a specific type of meaning modulations – satisfy this condition. (shrink)

In this article I examine Wilfrid Sellars’s account of linguistic rules and rule-following, with a special focus on how the topic emerges and develops in his earliest philosophical writings. In the first part of the article, I show how Sellars’s distinctively original approach to rules and rule-following is elaborated in the project of pure pragmatics in the late 1940s, through which he confronts Carnap’s idea of language as calculus and replaces it with the notion of an empirically meaningful (...) language. The key point is the realization that a meaningful language cannot be reduced to a list of syntactic constraints supplemented by designation rules; it also requires conformation rules that reflect the material constraints of the world in which the language is embedded. This holistic, normative, nonrelational account of language and meaning anticipates Sellars’s later inferentialism, in which material rules of inference are constitutive of meaning. In the second part of the article, I address the wider problem of how rules can be embodied in behavior, which Sellars tackles from the point of view of the classic rule-following dilemma. The gist of his solution lies in the evolutionary-inspired notion of pattern-governed behaviour, which allows Sellars to show how it is possible for language learners to internalize rules in their practices without prior explicit cognitive awareness of them. Such account, refined in the interlacing of language-entry, intralinguistic, and language-exit transitions into a unified picture of concept acquisition, integrates the normative and natural dimension of linguistic activity. (shrink)

Inference is a powerful tool; after all, it generally plays a central role in the activity of thinking. But the process of making an inference is not universally correctly applied, nor is it always understood. The rules of inference are capable of misapplication, in the sense that we sometimes infer 'too much', or might infer something which is qualitatively different from the premises we have started with. Certain kinds of inference, or inferences drawn from certain (...) kinds of phenomena or certain kinds of premise, are misleading or incorrect. And not every inference is an inference validly drawn. Invalid inferences are the result of one of two errors: firstly, an error resulting from an incorrect premise, or a premise whose meaning is uncertain or unclear; or secondly, an error which is the consequence of the incorrect application of the rules of inference. The purpose of this short book is to consider a number of these types of error. Much of the book's subject matter comprises the areas of philosophical discussion which the author encountered during a programme of undergraduate study at the University of Oxford. (shrink)

Lexical ambiguity has classically been categorized into two kinds. Homonyms are single word forms that map to multiple, unrelated meanings (e.g., “bat” meaning baseball equipment or a flying mammal). Polysemes are single word forms that map to multiple, related senses (e.g., “breakfast” meaning a plate of food or an event). Yet there is a longstanding debate as to whether polysemy and homonymy reflect distinct cognitive representations. Some (e.g., Fodor & Lepore, 2002; Klein & Murphy, 2001) posit that they do not (...) — merely describing differing patterns of usage — while others (e.g., Falkum & Vicente, 2015; Pietroski, 2018) argue that polysemes, but not homonyms, involve an underspecified representation that is neutral with respect to the form’s multiple senses. While some extant experimental evidence supports the latter view (Klepousniotou, Titone, & Romero, 2008; Srinivasan, Berner, & Rabagliati, 2019), there has not yet been clear evidence of the representation of lexical ambiguity affecting domain-general reasoning. Using a novel inference paradigm, we compare participants’ dispositions to endorse deductive, Aristotelian arguments with equivocating polysemes versus comparable arguments with equivocating homonyms. We find that participants endorse the former substantially more than the latter, a phenomenon that we dub the "Uncommon Sense Effect". Our results provide direct evidence that polysemes and homonyms have underlyingly distinct mental representations — in particular that polysemes uniquely invoke an underspecified representation that allows for rule-based inferences across distinct senses. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently gained considerable attention due to their ability to draw inferences from information provided by users. These neural networks appear to generate logical inferences on a probabilistic basis, often emulating patterns that resemble classical rules of inference. Traditionally, inference has been understood as a cognitive process through which conclusions are derived from premises. However, the nature of inference itself, and the possibility of extending it beyond the human domain, has long been (...) debated. In particular, a central question arises: can the inferential capacity of LLMs be comparable to that of human beings? This article argues that the difference between human inference and the kind of inference produced by LLMs lies in the phenomenological, or affective, dimension of reasoning. More specifically, the distinction concerns the absence of metacognitive feelings that guide, monitor, and evaluate thought processes, such as reasoning or inferring. Although LLMs are capable of simulating novel inferences, their tendency to generate inferential hallucinations reveals the lack of the self-regulatory dimension that characterizes human reasoning. In contrast to the affective component present in human condition, inferential failures in LLMs can be interpreted in terms of three aspects: the reversal curse, inferential hallucinations resulting from decoding strategies, and overconfidence. Accordingly, it is concluded that one of the causes of inferential hallucinations is the absence of metacognitive feelings, including the lack of a feeling of correctness, the absence of the balance provided by a sense of reliability, and the lack of doubt. (shrink)

What is it for an agent to follow a rule, rather than merely act in accordance with it? An intuitive and plausible answer to this question is that to follow a rule is to perform an intentional act such that S follows a rule R iff S intends to act in accordance with R and subsequently acts on that intention. This intentional acount of rule-following faces essentially two problems, widely seen as fatal: (1) Kripkean sceptical arguments, originally derived from Wittgenstein, (...) suggesting that the requirements of a rule outstrip the possible content of our intention, and (2) a regress argument due to Boghossian, namely that the intentional view requires the agent to represent the conditional content of the rule in such a way that an inferential step is needed for the agent to move from the antecedent to the consequent, which, given some plausible assumptions about inference, leads to a regress. -/- In this paper, I defend the intentional view of rule-following, using a game-theoretic account of semantic content outlined in Berg (2022) and Berg (forthcoming). I argue that by placing the agent in the basic constitutive practice of using the terms that figure in an expression of the rule, we can give an answer to (1). Likewise, by positing that the agents have an in-built mental mechanism which is such that it responds to the constitutive structure of the content being represented (see Quilty-Dunn and Mandelbaum 2018) and by placing the resulting movement of thought in a basic constitutive practice of inferring, we can avoid Boghossian’s regress. (shrink)

It has been common wisdom for centuries that scientific inference cannot be deductive; if it is inference at all, it must be a distinctive kind of inductive inference. According to demonstrative theories of induction, however, important scientific inferences are not inductive in the sense of requiring ampliative inference rules at all. Rather, they are deductive inferences with sufficiently strong premises. General considerations about inferences suffice to show that there is no difference in justification between an (...) inference construed demonstratively or ampliatively. The inductive risk may be shouldered by premises or rules, but it cannot be shirked. Demonstrative theories of induction might, nevertheless, better describe scientific practice. And there may be good methodological reasons for constructing our inferences one way rather than the other. By exploring the limits of these possible advantages, I argue that scientific inference is neither of essence deductive nor of essence inductive. (shrink)

I discuss a neglected solution to the skeptical problem introduced by Lewis Carroll’s “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” (1895) in terms of a self-citational inferential license. I then consider some responses to this solution. The most significant response on behalf of the skeptic utilizes the familiar distinction between two ways of accepting a rule: as action-guiding and as a mere truth. I argue that this is ultimately unsatisfactory and conclude by opting for an alternative conception of rules as (...) representations of behavior deployed for various purposes, some theoretical and others practical. This alternative conception does not allow the skeptical problem to get off the ground. (shrink)

Scholars interested in the characterology presupposed by constitutional government have occasionally turned to Plato’s Laws, one of the earliest and most penetrating treatments of the subject. Even so, interpreters have neglected a vital tension that the Laws presents as coeval with lawfulness itself. Through a close reading of the dialogue’s opening passages, I argue that the rule of law for Plato is implicated in a certain paradox: it both prohibits and requires the imitation of god. Law cannot safely originate with (...) human beings; yet human beings must involve themselves nonetheless in laying law down. Trustworthy lawgivers must revere the gods while at the same time emulating them, must somehow make law themselves while regarding that very task as beyond their ken. Although the political psychology of lawfulness would therefore seem incoherent, I conclude by surveying reasons for thinking this inference unwarranted. (shrink)

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.

Lewis Carroll’s 1895 paper “Achilles and the Tortoise” showed that we need a distinction between rules of inference and premises. We cannot, on pain of regress, treat all rules simply as further premises in an argument. But Carroll’s paper doesn’t say very much about what rules there must be. Indeed, it is consistent with what Carroll says there to think that the only rule is -elimination. You might think that modern Bayesians, who seem to think that (...) the only rule of inference they need is conditionalisation, have taken just this lesson from Carroll. But obviously nothing in Carroll’s argument rules out there being other rules as well. (shrink)

In his essay ‘Transparency, Belief, Intention’, Alex Byrne (2011) argues that transparency—our ability to form beliefs about some of our intentional mental states by considering their subject matter, rather than on the basis of special psychological evidence—involves inferring ‘from world to mind’. In this reply I argue that this cannot be correct. I articulate an intuitive necessary condition for a pattern of belief to count as a rule of inference, and I show that the pattern involved in transparency does (...) not meet that condition. As a result, I conclude that transparency does not involve inference. (shrink)

Legal systems often rule that people own objects in their territory. We propose that an early-developing ability to make territory-based inferences of ownership helps children address informational demands presented by ownership. Across 6 experiments (N = 504), we show that these inferences develop between ages 3 and 5 and stem from two aspects of the psychology of ownership. First, we find that a basic ability to infer that people own objects in their territory is already present at age 3 (Experiment (...) 1). Children even make these inferences when the territory owner unintentionally acquired the objects and was unaware of them (Experiments 2 and 3). Second, we find that between ages 3 and 5, children come to consider past events in these judgments. They move from solely considering the current location of an object in territory-based inferences, to also considering and possibly inferring where it originated (Experiments 4 to 6). Together, these findings suggest that territory-based inferences of ownership are unlikely to be constructions of the law. Instead, they may reflect basic intuitions about ownership that operate from early in development. (shrink)

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 is to appeal to features like usefulness or indispensability to important or required cognitive projects. On the resulting view, whether an inferential step counts as large or small depends on the importance of the relevant rule of inference in our thought. (shrink)

I examine and resolve an exegetical dichotomy between two main interpretations of Peirce’s theory of abduction, namely, the Generative Interpretation and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation. According to the former, abduction is the instinctive process of generating explanatory hypotheses through a mental faculty called insight. According to the latter, abduction is a rule-governed procedure for determining the relative pursuitworthiness of available hypotheses and adopting the worthiest one for further investigation—such as empirical tests—based on economic considerations. It is shown that the Generative Interpretation (...) is inconsistent with a fundamental fact of logic for Peirce—i.e., abduction is a kind of inference—and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation is flawed and inconsistent with Peirce’s naturalistic explanation for the possibility of science and his view about the limitations of classical scientific method. Changing the exegetical locus classicus from the logical form of abduction to insight and economy of research, I argue for the Unified Interpretation according to which abduction includes both instinctive hypotheses-generation and rule-governed hypotheses-ranking. I show that the Unified Interpretation is immune to the objections raised successfully against the Generative and the Pursuitworthiness interpretations. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

The Born rule P = |ψ|2 is among the most empirically robust principles in physics, yet its status within quantum theory remains conceptually unsettled. Formal derivations— Gleason’s theorem, decision-theoretic approaches, envariance, and information-theoretic reconstructions— show that no alternative probability measure is consistent with the structure of Hilbert space. However, these derivations do not identify the physical mechanism by which real detectors implement |ψ|2 in the laboratory. This paper argues that the Born rule emerges, not as an additional postulate about the (...) quantum state, but as a consequence of a universal three-layer architecture shared by all measurement devices: (i) a wave layer governed by linear quantum dynamics, (ii) an interaction layer in which couplings are bilinear in the fields and thus energy-like, and (iii) a threshold layer in which nonlinear amplification mechanisms respond to energy deposition. Because Lorentz-invariant bilinear interactions ensure that the only macroscopic influence a quantum system can exert on a detector is encoded in |ψ|2-weighted energy or intensity fluxes, and because threshold processes must infer probabilities from these fluxes, empirical frequencies are forced to follow the Born rule. The result is not an axiomatic “derivation” of |ψ|2 from a theory free of it, but a detector-interface naturalization: given standard quantum field-theoretic structure, any empirically adequate measurement apparatus must implement |ψ|2 and no other law. The account is interpretation-neutral, constraining what any ontology must reproduce at the interface without addressing the single-outcome problem. We discuss the role of threshold stochasticity, the apparent circularity of invoking quantum field theory, and prospects for experimental probes using hybrid detectors and engineered nonlinearities. (shrink)

In our thought, we employ rules of inference and belief-forming methods more generally. For instance, we (plausibly) employ deductive rules such as Modus Ponens, ampliative rules such as Inference to the Best Explanation, and perceptual methods that tell us to believe what perceptually appears to be the case. What explains our entitlement to employ these rules and methods? This chapter considers the motivations for broadly internalist answers to this question. It considers three such motivations—one (...) based on simple cases, one based on a general conception of epistemic responsibility, and one based on skeptical scenarios. The chapter argues that none of these motivations is successful. The first two motivations lead to forms of internalism—Extreme Method Internalism and Defense Internalism—that are too strong to be tenable. The third motivation motivates Mental Internalism (Mentalism), which does not fit with plausible accounts of entitlement. (shrink)

Inferentialism is the view that representational content is explained by linguistic or mental states interacting according to inferential rules. Mendelovici's and Bourget's swapping argument against inferentialism shows that rules of inference do not sufficiently constrain content. This paper argues that their argument can be further strengthened so that its conclusion yields that the content and inferential roles are strictly independent. It is then argued that this conclusion is untenable and that the argument, rather than undermining inferentialism, corrodes (...) the model-theoretic foundations of standard philosophical semantics. The paper concludes with some hints towards an alternative semantic paradigm inspired by intuitionistic type-theory that is immune to the swapping argument. (shrink)

Traditionally, analytic philosophy has been affiliated with a formalist conception of inference which understands reasoning as a process that exploits syntactic properties of natural language according to a set of formal rules that are insensitive to conceptual content. This chapter discusses an alternative approach that takes semantic properties as the underlying forces driving rational inference. Building on Wilfird Sellars’ notion of material inference and analytic tools from cognitive linguistics, I will show how parts of the inferential (...) structure of natural language can be explained in terms of semantic relations between extra-logical concepts. In the end, I will outline a strategy for explicating some of these inference-types using Peter Gärdenfors’ theory of conceptual spaces. (shrink)

Logical inferentialism maintains that the formal rules of inference fix the meanings of the logical terms. The categoricity problem points out to the fact that the standard formalizations of classical logic do not uniquely determine the intended meanings of its logical terms, i.e., these formalizations are not categorical. This means that there are different interpretations of the logical terms that are consistent with the relation of logical derivability in a logical calculus. In the case of the quantificational logic, (...) the categoricity problem is generated by the finite nature of the standard calculi and one direction in which it can be solved is to strengthen the deductive systems by adding infinitary rules (such as the ω-rule), i.e., to construct a full formalization. Another main direction is to provide a natural semantics for the standard rules of inference, i.e., a semantics for which these rules are categorical. My aim in this paper is to analyze some recent approaches for solving the categoricity problem and to argue that a logical inferentialist should accept the infinitary rules of inference for the first order quantifiers, since our use of the expressions “all” and “there is” leads us beyond the concrete and finite reasoning, and human beings do sometimes employ infinitary rules of inference in their reasoning. (shrink)

A priori theories of justification of logic based on meaning often lead to trouble, in particular to issues concerning circularity. First, I present Boghossian’s a prioriview. Boghossian maintains the rule-circular justifications from a conceptual role semantics. However, rule-circular justifications are problematic. Recently, Boghossian (Boghossian, 2015) has claimed that rules should be thought of as contents and contents as abstract objects. In this paper, I discuss Boghossian’s view. My argumentation consists of three main parts. First, I analyse several arguments to (...) show that in fact, Boghossian’s inferentialist solution is not fully satisfying. Second, I discuss the matter further, if one accepts that basic logical rules are constitutive of meaning, that is, they constitute the logical concepts and the content of a rule is an abstract object, then abstract objects — like, for example, rules — could be constitutive of meaning. The question is whether conceptual priority is in the judgment or in the object and what theory of content is pursued. Grasping content as a matter of knowing how a word or concept behaves in inferences is not completely explicative. Finally, I contend that rules come to exist as a result of certain kinds of mental action. These actions function as constitutive norms. Logical rules are not abstract objects but ideal. What one construes as norms or rules of content may involve idealization, but this is because we share a language. (shrink)

It’s generally thought that we finite beings can’t follow infinitary rules of inference like the omega rule. But this consensus has recently been challenged, most notably by Jared Warren, whose account of the determinacy of our arithmetical language depends on the claim that we do follow the omega rule. Warren argues for that claim by exhibiting a case in which it’s purportedly clear that we’re actually disposed to use that rule to infer a generalization from infinitely many instances. (...) Here I respond to this argument: I show that, in the case in question, there’s conclusive reason to think we’re inferring from the generalization to the instances rather than the other way around and so aren’t engaging in infinitary reasoning, and I argue, more generally, that finite beings like us can never use infinitary reasoning to come to accept new generalizations, as the omega rule would require us to do. (shrink)

Research into the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) aims to identify not just those brain areas that are NCC, but also those that are not. In the received method for ruling out a brain area from being an NCC, this is accomplished by showing a brain area’s content to be consistently absent from subjects’ reports about what they are experiencing. This paper points out how this same absence can be used to infer that the brain area’s content is cognitively inaccessible, (...) in which case we would expect its content to be absent from subjects’ reports whether its content is (phenomenally) conscious or not. If so, such reports cannot count as evidence against that brain area being an NCC, and the received method fails. An alternative method (one suggested in Block, 2007) is considered. (shrink)

The present PhD thesis is concerned with the question whether good reasoning requires that the subject has some cognitive grip on the relation between premises and conclusion. One consideration in favor of such a requirement goes as follows: In order for my belief-formation to be an instance of reasoning, and not merely a causally related sequence of beliefs, the process must be guided by my endorsement of a rule of reasoning. Therefore I must have justified beliefs about the relation between (...) my premises and my conclusion. -/- The rationality of a belief often depends on whether it is rightly connected to other beliefs, or more generally to other mental states —the states capable of providing a reason to holding the belief in question. For instance, some rational beliefs are connected to other beliefs by being inferred from them. It is often accepted that the connection implies that the subject in some sense ‘takes the mental states in question to be reason-providing’. But views on how exactly this is to be understood differ widely. They range from interpretations according to which ‘taking a mental state to be reason-providing’ imposes a mere causal sustaining relation between belief and reason-providing state to interpretations according to which one ‘takes a mental state to be reason-providing’ only if one believes that the state is reason-providing. The most common worry about the latter view is that it faces a vicious regress. In this thesis a different but in some respects similar interpretation of ‘taking something as reason-providing’ is given. It is argued to consist of a disposition to react in certain ways to information that challenges the reason-providing capacity of the allegedly reason-providing state. For instance, that one has inferred A from B partly consists in being disposed to suspend judgment about A if one obtains a reason to believe that B does not render A probable. The account is defended against regress-objections and the suspicion of explanatory circularity. (shrink)

Are Logical Rules Encoded in Neurons? This paper challenges the foundational assumptions of evolutionary cognition by questioning whether logic can be reduced to neural circuitry. Drawing from leading neuroscientific voices such as Patricia Churchland and Michael Gazzaniga, it critically examines claims that rationality and logical inference are mere byproducts of evolved brain structures optimized for survival, not truth. The paper argues that such a view creates a self-defeating epistemic paradox: if logical reasoning is the result of evolutionary processes (...) aimed at survival rather than truth, then the truth-claims of neuroscience—including its assertion that logic is emergent—are themselves epistemically unstable. Philosophers, including Alvin Plantinga and Thomas Nagel, are cited to reinforce this challenge. In response, the paper introduces a field-based model of logic rooted in the Consciousness-Structured Field Theory (CSFT), which posits that logic is a universal, non-material structure accessed by the brain through resonance rather than generated by it. This model draws inspiration from quantum field behavior, where resonance and excitation precede particle manifestation, offering a metaphysical parallel grounded in scientifically observed phenomena. The proposed framework aims to secure a non-contingent foundation for logical reasoning and address the internal contradictions of evolutionary reductionism. If validated, this approach could have far-reaching implications for epistemology, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This paper develops an external-reader protocol for Structural Intelligence (SI), addressing the problem of how a philosophical framework can become publicly usable without degrading into a style of persuasive diagnosis. SI’s core terms—coherence, contact, answerability, burden, witness, repair, and revision—are powerful enough to illuminate systems under pressure, but also powerful enough to be imitated. The central risk is therefore SI-theater: structural-sounding judgment that lacks the evidentiary discipline needed to make the judgment answerable. The paper proposes a public-use protocol built around (...) a minimal runtime sheet, claim-status ladder, downgrade rules, reader-capture safeguards, calibration cases, a falsification registry, and a public translation layer. It argues that every strong SI reading must declare its domain, object of read, observations, inferences, missing information, falsifier, cost bearer, revision trigger, witness or trace, claim status, and output state. The contribution is methodological rather than doctrinal: it does not expand SI into another domain, but makes the framework harder to misuse. A strong framework is not only one that can interpret; it is one that can stop interpreting when evidence does not hold, route repair before exposure when contact-load would harm, and revise its own method when reality pushes back. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is reasoning by means of which you arrive at a new intention. Reasoning in general is an activity through which you arrive at a new attitude by means of a rule-governed operation on the contents of your exiting attitudes. Reasoning is correct if it is governed by a correct rule, and a rule is correct if it corresponds to a basing permission of rationality. Rationality permits you to have certain attitudes based on others; for instance it permits you (...) to believe _q_ on the basis of believing _p_ and believing that if _p_ then _q_—this is an example of a basing permission. Although reasoning is made correct by a permission of rationality rather than a requirement of rationality, it often brings you to satisfy a requirement of rationality. (shrink)