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Don’t Jump to Conclusions
The Role of Inferences in Making and Analyzing Arguments
Consider the following argument:
Chocolate makes you smarter.
Therefore, I should eat lots of chocolate every day.
While many of us would like this argument to be true, it just doesn’t feel like it is. Even if we grant that the first statement (chocolate makes you smarter) is true, we find it hard to take the step from that to the conclusion of eating lots of chocolate every day. Why?
It is because arguments are not just about making true statements but about connecting statements to each other, or inferences. We can think of true statements as bricks and inferences as the mortar that holds a brick wall together. Without the mortar, it is very easy for the wall to fall apart. Thus, many bad arguments don’t fail because of bad facts, but because of bad inferences.
Inferences help us in two ways. First, understanding inferences helps us establish connections within an argument. For example, we can link conclusions. Second, they help us connect the argument to other arguments. But first, let’s look at what implications and inferences are.
