{"id":12423,"date":"2009-09-03T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/03\/inference-and-implication\/"},"modified":"2009-09-03T13:00:18","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T13:00:18","slug":"inference-and-implication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/03\/inference-and-implication\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Correct Usage of &#8216;Infers&#8217; and &#8216;Implies&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Within the space of a few days, I caught two TV pundits and an otherwise competent writer misusing &#39;infer.&#39; Why do people have such a&#0160; difficult time with&#0160;the distinction between inference and implication?&#0160; I will try to explain the matter as simply as I can.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><strong>The test to determine whether a use of &#39;infer&#39; is correct is whether or not the thing said to be inferring is a mind. If it is a mind, then the&#0160;use is correct; if it is not a mind, then the use is incorrect.<\/strong>&#0160; Some examples:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Georgia\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The author&#39;s citations infer that Serling drew inspiration from a diverse group of authors and philosophers. <\/em><span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; COLOR: #ff0000\">This use of &#39;infer&#39; is incorrect because a citation is not a mind, and so cannot engage in any such mental operation as inference. &#39;Imply&#39; would be correct.<\/span>\n<li><em>Seeing Tom&#39;s car in front of Sally&#39;s house, Bill inferred that Tom was visiting Sally. <\/em><span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #00bf00\">Correct. It is correct because the thing doing the inferring, Bill, is an entity capable of the mental operation of drawing a conclusion from one or more premises.<\/span><em> <\/em>\n<li><em>Pelosi&#39;s &#39;astroturf&#39; remark inferred that protesters at town hall meetings are organized agitators.<\/em> <span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #ff0000\">Incorrect. A remark is the content of a remarking; it is something that a person says. What a person says is not a mind but a proposition, and a proposition, not being a mind, cannot infer anything. &#39;Implied&#39; would be correct. <\/span>\n<li><em>Pelosi implied that town hall protesters are organized agitators when she made her &#39;astroturf&#39; comment. <\/em><span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #00bf00\">This is a correct use of &#39;implied.&#39; But note that &#39;imply&#39; has two main uses. One is the strictly logical use according to which implication is a relation between propositions. The other is the nonlogical use according to which implication is a relation between a person (or a mind) and a proposition. Pelosi implied that the protesters are organized in the sense that she suggested that this is so. In most cases one can substitute &#39;suggests&#39; for &#39;implies&#39; when the latter is employed nonlogically. <\/span>\n<li><em>Are you implying that I&#39;m a liar? <\/em><span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #00bf00\">This is a correct use of &#39;implying.&#39; The word is being used in the nonlogical sense just explained. One can replace the question salva significatione with &#39;Are you suggesting that I&#39;m a liar?&#39; <\/span>\n<li><em>Are you inferring that I am a liar?<\/em> <span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #00bf00\">This is also correct inasmuch as the addressee may indeed be inferring that the speaker is a liar. The addressee may be concluding from the speaker&#39;s shifty eyes and other &#39;body language&#39; that he is not telling the truth.<\/span><em> <\/em>\n<li><em>What you said infers that I&#39;m a liar.<\/em> <span style=\"FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: #ff0000\">This is incorrect because what a person said cannot engage in any mental operations such as the operation of drawing a conclusion from a premise. &#39;Implies&#39; would be correct. &#39;Implies&#39; would then be being used to express a relation between two propositions.<\/span> <\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\">\n<p><\/font><font face=\"Georgia\">In sum, inference is&#0160;the mental operation of drawing a conclusion from one or more premises.&#0160; Only minds can infer.&#0160; So uses of &#39;infer&#39; and cognates are correct only &#0160;in application to minds.&#0160; Any use of &#39;infer&#39; that implies that a nonmind can engage in inference is incorrect.&#0160; So the following is incorrect: <em>Any use of &#39;infer&#39; that infers that a nonmind can engage in inference is incorrect.<\/em>&#0160; &#0160; Implication in its strictly logical sense in a relation between propositions.&#0160; Hence the slogan: <strong>Only minds infer; only propositions imply.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Unfortunately&#0160;for the slogan, the water is muddied by the fact that &#39;implies&#39; has the two distinct uses lately explained.&#0160; So here is a more accurate slogan: <strong>Only minds infer; only propositions logically imply, though persons can conversationally imply.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within the space of a few days, I caught two TV pundits and an otherwise competent writer misusing &#39;infer.&#39; Why do people have such a&#0160; difficult time with&#0160;the distinction between inference and implication?&#0160; I will try to explain the matter as simply as I can. The test to determine whether a use of &#39;infer&#39; is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/03\/inference-and-implication\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On the Correct Usage of &#8216;Infers&#8217; and &#8216;Implies&#8217;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-logica-utens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}