For Students
To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the situation. Inferences are classified as either deductive or inductive. An example of the former is, “Fred must be in either the museum or the café. He is not in the café; therefore, he is in the museum,” and of the latter is, “Previous accidents of this sort were caused by instrument failure. This accident is of the same sort; therefore, it was likely caused by instrument failure.” The most significant difference between these forms of reasoning is that in the deductive case, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of ...(100 of 5093 words)