Concept

Inference

Overview

act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Inference is discussed.

The stimulus consists of certain black marks on white paper--or perhaps on pink paper. This stimulus is only connected with horses and the Derby by association, yet your reaction is one appropriate to the Derby. Traditionally, there was only inference where there was a “mental process”, which, after dwelling upon the “premisses”, was led to assert the “conclusion” by means of insight into their logical connection. I…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
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Induction, then, is a real process of Reasoning or Inference. Whether, and in what sense, as much can be said of the Syllogism, remains to be determined by the examination into which we are about to enter.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
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That which determines us, from given premises, to draw one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind, whether it be constitutional or acquired. The habit is good or otherwise, according as it produces true conclusions from true premises or not; and an inference is regarded as valid or not, without reference to the truth or falsity of its conclusion specially, but according as the habit which determines it…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
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This definition excludes from the meaning of the term Induction, various logical operations, to which it is not unusual to apply that name. Induction, as above defined, is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown; and any operation involving no inference, any process in which what seems the conclusion is no wider than the premises from which it is drawn, does not fall within the meaning of…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
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The conclusion that such perceptions as we have been considering are terms in an inference is to be carefully discriminated from the loose statement that sense perceptions are unconscious inferences. There is a great difference between saying that the perception of a shape affords an indication for an inference and saying that the perception of shape is itself an inference. That definite shapes would not be…
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
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