1. THE NATURE OF INFERENCE.
Inference is the thought process of deriving a judgment from one or two antecedent judgments.
The process is simply a matter of expressing explicitly in a final judgment, a truth that was implied in one or two previous judgments. To exemplify: From the antecedent truth, that “All teachers should be fair minded,” one may derive a consequent truth that “This teacher, Albert White, should be fair minded.” Or from the statement, “All men are mortal,” one may derive the judgment, “No men are immortal.” Because the ground is wet we conclude that it has rained. If all dogs are quadrupeds then surely some dogs are quadrupeds. Finally from the two propositions, “All training school students are high school graduates,” and “Mary Jones is a training school student,” we are led to conclude that “Mary Jones is a high school graduate.”