An Informal Account of Our Theory of Justified Inference

Abstract

Contrary to beliefs, inferences do not have an action-guiding function themselves, but they are nevertheless part of an action-guiding system by means of their producing beliefs that do have such function. Inferences are auxiliary processes by which agents generate new beliefs; inference dispositions are auxiliary devices by which agents may generate new beliefs. Accordingly, the justification of inferences is derivative on the justification of beliefs, or, more precisely, the justification of an inference depends on the justification of its conclusion belief. However, it would be wrong to define an inference to be justified simply if its conclusion belief were justified, since the unjustifiedness of the latter belief might merely be the consequence of the unjustifiedness of the premise belief of the inference; when we call an inference justified, we actually want to assess just the inference process, not its input. This may again be achieved by either presupposing an internalist theory of justified belief, or an externalist theory of justified belief (or a mixed theory, but we will again only consider the extreme cases).