Concept

Rule of inference

Overview

systematic logical process capable of deriving a conclusion from hypotheses

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

Possible passages

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1. But such exact determination as is involved in the conception of an exact spatial boundary does not seem to belong to the true thought-object of perception. The ascription of an exact boundary really belongs to the transition stage of thought as it passes from the thought-object of perception to the thought-object of science. The transition from the sense-object immediately presented to the thought-object of…

   Alfred North Whitehead, The organisation of thought, educational and scientific

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2. When we draw a deductive or analytic conclusion, our rule of inference is that facts of a certain general character are either invariably or in a certain proportion of cases accompanied by facts of another general character. Then our premise being a fact of the former class, we infer with certainty or with the appropriate degree of probability the existence of a fact of the second class.

   Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic

   States what Rule of inference is; opens on Rule of inference.

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3. Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.

   Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world

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Philosophers who discussed Rule of inference

• Chrysippus
• Alfred North Whitehead
• Language of thought hypothesis

Related ideas

• First-order logic
• Outline of ancient India
• Argument
• Deontic logic
• Interpretation (logic)
• Formula
• Intuitionistic logic
• Logic programming
• Logical conjunction
• Logical connective
• Propositional logic
• Mathematics
• Modus ponens
• Modus tollens
• Law
• Mathematical logic
• Model theory
• Validity (logic)
• Philosophy of logic
• Reductio ad absurdum
• Domain of discourse
• Probability
• Prolog
• Singular term

Opposing perspectives

• First-order logic
• Logical connective
• Propositional logic
• Theorem
• Formal system
• Formal proof

Place in the tradition

Part of British philosophy.

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