Inference is a mental operation, consisting in obtaining a new conclusion from several judgments. People use inferences when they need to understand something: deduce a consequence, carry out a proof, systematize knowledge, test a hypothesis, etc.
Reasonable thinking, as opposed to the incoherent or emotionally charged stream of thought, consists of reasoning — complex mental constructions. And reasoning, in turn, consists of inferences — elementary mental operations.
The judgments from which an inference is built are called premises. A judgment that is obtained by comparing premises is called a conclusion. “Inference is an operation of thinking, during which a judgment is derived from a comparison of a number of premises” (Spirkin, p. 449). In order for a conclusion to be true, it must be based on correct premises and be logical in itself. Unfortunately, people do not know logic well, therefore, in their conclusions they often make logical errors and come to wrong conclusions.
The child was transferred to another school, his performance improved — therefore, the new school is better than the old one. Correct inference? Not obvious. Perhaps the new school is less demanding.
A person can come to this or that judgment by direct observation of a fact or indirectly — with the help of inference. The value of inference for the process of cognition lies in the fact that with its help new knowledge is obtained without resorting to direct experience, it is extracted from the provisions formulated in speech, reflecting the historical experience of people.
The ability to reason with the help of inferences is not formed immediately: small children are not ready for inferences — as well as nationalities that do not have sufficient culture for this. Back in the 30s, the Soviet psychologist A.R. Luria wrote based on the results of studies of the thinking of the inhabitants of Central Asia that many of them think only concretely, refusing to make generalized, abstract conclusions. The situation, as with Pinocchio:
Pinocchio, here you have 3 apples. You gave one apple to Piero — how many apples do you have left?
— Three! Because I won’t give Pierrot an apple.
The two main forms of reasoning are induction and deduction. If I have traveled for a long time and seen only white swans, I can draw a general conclusion from these particular cases: «All swans are white.» This is induction, the ascent from the particular to the general.
By the way, in this case, the conclusion is erroneous, swans are not only white, but also black.
But deduction is a conclusion from the general to the particular. An example of the ingenious application of deduction is Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, not all of us are Sherlock Holmes. “If my mother always feeds me breakfast in the morning, then today she will feed me!” is an example of deduction, but not a very convincing example.
Reasoning is studied by two sciences — logic and psychology. Logic teaches which conclusions are right and which are wrong. Psychology studies something else — how children master the operations of inference, how children develop logical thinking.
The prerequisites for this form of thinking in the form of the simplest inferences begin to take shape already in preschoolers. The processes of perception, observation, games set the child the task of understanding them, comprehending the results of his actions, understanding the causal relationships between phenomena. However, the conclusions of preschoolers, as a rule, are very imperfect and often incorrect, since a characteristic feature of children’s thinking is an orientation towards a sign that dominates perception and obscures the true basis of the event.
For example, a child judges whether an object will float or sink by its size …
In the process of solving various problems, schoolchildren learn to use both full detailed inferences and abbreviated ones, which are equivalent in function to complete ones. Research has shown that provisions justifying specific operations are usually omitted, although they are certainly implied. It is characteristic that in the early stages of learning, the conclusions are more detailed. Replacing a detailed inference with a folded one indicates a higher level of activity, however, a premature transition to abbreviated conclusions can cause erroneous decisions due to the loss of premises.