A Class Room Logic / Deductive and Inductive, with Special Application to the Science and Art of Teaching

by George Hastings McNair

1. INFERENCE AND REASONING.

Inference has been defined as both a product and a process. When used to indicate a process the term inference becomes synonomous with reasoning. If logicians could agree to confine inference to the product and reasoning to the process, it would remove an ambiguity which is more or less misleading. But since this has not become the custom, we shall use inference as indicating the process as well as the product.

Definitions—Middle Term Explained.

Inference is the thought process of deriving a judgment from one or two antecedent judgments.

Mediate inference is inference by means of a middle term.

Reasoning of this nature involves three terms, two of which are compared with a third or middle term, and then related to each other to form a new judgment. The middle term is the common unit, or the standard by which the other terms are measured. To illustrate: If John and James are each six feet tall, then plainly, they are of the same height. The standard, or middle term, is “six feet tall.”