Assessing Inferences

§4

Recall from earlier that an inference is good when the premises are related to one another and to the conclusion in such a manner that it is impossible or unlikely for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true. The more unlikely it is for the conclusion to be false when the premises are true, the stronger the inference is. We will now discuss several different types of inference, considering how they work and what makes some inferences of that type stronger than others.