11. INFERENCE AS A THOUGHT PRODUCT.
Reasoning is the process of deriving a new judgment from a consideration of other judgments. The product of any reasoning process may be called an inference, although, as will appear in a later chapter, inference is commonly used as indicating the process as well as the product.
Often reasoning may assume a syllogistic form with the inference as its conclusion. A syllogism is an arrangement of three propositions using three different terms. The following are syllogisms:
(1) All children should play.
Mary is a child.
Hence, Mary should play.
(2) No teacher should judge hastily.
You are a teacher.
Hence, you should not judge hastily.
In the second syllogism the inference, “you should not judge hastily,” is derived from the other two judgments by merely eliminating the common term teacher and disjoining the remaining two terms. The inference is consequently a new judgment. Therefore, reasoning is only a matter of judging carried to a more complex stage.
To summarize—conception is largely a matter of conjoining a general notion with an individual notion, judging of conjoining and disjoining all kinds of notions and inference of conjoining and disjoining judgments. All three processes go to form the larger process of thinking. The concept, the judgment and the inference are products arising from conjoining and disjoining notions.