Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to show that central problems arising in the current debate about the nature of inferring can be solved by means of a predicative account of inference, which is inspired by Peter Hanks’s (2007, 2011, 2015) act-type theory of propositions. According to Hanks, the activity of judging is not the activity of assenting to an already structured content, but the activity of predicating a property of an object. The unity of the proposition is constituted by this very activity, and propositions are understood as types of predicative acts. I will argue that we are able to formulate a new account of the activity of inferring on the basis of Hanks’s account of judgement and proposition. We are able to take an inference itself to be a complex kind of predicative activity if we understand the premises and the conclusion of an argument as judgements in Hanks’s sense. A valid (or invalid) argument can then be described as a type of predicative act.

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