(Ep. 9) The Analysis of Reasoning: Going Deeper – Inferences

hello I'm Linda Elder I'm the president of the foundation for critical thinking I'm here with my colleague Dr Gerald noich hello Gerald hi Linda good to see you Gerald is a fellow of the foundation for critical thinking which is a 501c3 nonprofit organization in California we are focused in this series on the analysis of reasoning going deeper and in this particular session we're focused on inferences and before we begin let me just tell you that today is Friday May the 20th 2022 so we are going to explore the concept of inferences and for those of

you familiar with our work you'll know that inferences represent one of the elements of reasoning one of the elements of reasoning and we're going to burrow into that conception today and like to turn it over to you Gerald to introduce us to the concept of inferences okay well good glad to do it so there there's a lot I could say about inferences and um we're going to be discussing aspects of it so I can say that uh historically in the classical accounts of of reasoning by uh inferred from from uh Socrates but in Plato and

in Aristotle and all through the Middle Ages all the way up to nearly the present um reasoning was centered on inferences um there's a sense in which inferences lie in the concept of inference lies at the heart of Reason in the old conception the classical conception I don't mean old as an outmoded I mean old as in classical conception is that you start from something you start from information or assumptions and then you reason your way to a conclusion that act of reasoning your way toward the conclusion is is making an inference it's inferring something

there's a sense in which the word inference and conclusion are synonymous and there's another way in which they're a little bit different the word inference is actually ambiguous it's got two different senses one is is is that it's the conclusion you draw so I'm making the inference to such and such it's the it's the conclusion that you draw so inference in that way represents the statement that you're you're drawing out of the information plus assumption but there's another meaning of the word inference and that the inference is not what you arrive at but it's the

going from the information and the Assumption to the conclusion that is inference can mean making a con making an inference or drawing a conclusion so the classic conception of reasoning is that you start with something and you see what follows logically what makes sense the way it follows and and when that follows that's your inference or that's a good inference it's a sound or valid inference uh based on your information and assumptions but there's a variety of an inference that we list as in among the elements of reasoning in that wedge devoted to inferences that

I want to say a little bit about that's interpretation so whenever we interpret something we're making an inference we're drawing a conclusion so if I interpret your behavior I notice what your behavior is and I come to a conclusion about it that's what an interpretation is so interpretation is a is a intrinsically important part of inference and it's not usually it's not usually mentioned very much in the classical account of reasoning but no notice that you're making inferences all the time in your life you're making inferences about uh where about going through traffic about friends

you meet all those interpretations in your life about how to live your life better how to live your life at all you're making inferences what to have for dinner you're constantly making inferences it's not to say that we're always making good inferences it's not to say that we're always making inferences that are clear or accurate or relevant to the issue at hand but we're always making inferences and that actually brings up another kind of ambiguity about inferences in relation to the standards of critical thinking I just mentioned three clear accurate and relevant um and there

other standards of course but many times uh people talk about inferences as if they're something we need to teach our students we need to teach our students to make inferences and I worked with act uh the testing Corporation a few times and they had a big section of teaching students to make inferences and I know what they mean when they say that but that's not what they mean we're making inferences all the time all your students make inferences all the time there's not when they say your class was terrible your class was terrible that's an

inference right they observed your class they drew the conclusion that it was terrible it's an inference um that what we want to teach students is not to make inferences but to make inferences that me the standards of critical thinking meet the criteria Clarity accuracy relevance with as much precision as is needed as deep as is necessary and so forth so that's a general account of well there is there are many uh facets in what you just said and so let's burrow into some of those I'd like to just if I could articulate the way I

understand inferences so to me inferences are at the heart of how we make sense of the world and so we are continually making [Music] inferences and that means when I say continually I mean and linguistically so we are thinking thoughts more or less continually as we're awake and we're making inferences about what is happening in the world um just I'm think trying to think of another word for continually other than routinely but it's it's like it's always happening it's it's happening so much it's like the air we breathe it's like the concepts we use that

we have no awareness of so that for example every time you say something I have to make sense of what you said and actually I wrote a number of notes as you were talking in different directions and that shows some of my inference making right if someone were to if a teacher were to take this up right now she would see that I was with you I was paying attention and I was trying to make some reasonable moves based on what you have said all of these are inferences in context so we can't as with

all of our reason we can't get away from inferences and um but they're usually happening at the unconscious level and that's not necessarily a bad thing because we have have to do lots of things at the unconscious level I mean we have to assume that I'm assuming that this building is not going to fall down upon me while I'm talking to you so I have to be able to take certain things for granted I could never even live and that's how people go through things like post-traumatic stress because right there they can't they can't assume

things that they should be able to assume about their safety for example so to me inferences are very important in in terms of our teaching and learning critical thinking and I do think that everyone should learn the term inference and use it explicitly I do too and uh as you say we have examples of being able to teach us at the elementary level so let me give an example of that in relationship to well one of the things that I think is important you talked about the inference making as as both the as it were

conclusion as a form of inference and also the process right that leads you from this this is true or this is what I see therefore that is true it's a step of the mind it's it's another analogy for this process and the the importance of that one of the things it's so important about it is that when we make a step with this particular analogy if we make if if I if I make an inference I make if it's a step of my mind it's a decision that I make it's it's it's an active decision

if you will step is active so I've made this this I've taken this step and what is crucial to understand is that whenever I take that step I might have taken a different step I might have moved in a different direction so um somebody is so so these are some examples I've used with young children so you I give them this format to complete these sentences so here is the situation you come downstairs in the middle of the night and you you look next door to the house next door and you see what appears to

be a flashlight moving around in the house what do you infer and you can do this with very young children who really can't even write or read and they'll all their hands go up and they say there's a there's a thief there's a burglar or you know they'll say something right right and then they'll may say three different things or a lot of them will say that and then you say okay that may be true and this is also part of what they write out but so you might infer X but instead you could have

inferred why right right and this is a skill set that each of us must have if we are going to advance as critical thinkers right because if I can't see that I made a move and I could have made a different one and that would have been better than the one I made if I can't if I can't improve in that process then I'm going to have difficulty advancing as a thinker yeah yeah yeah so it is this process that I'm that I'm that I'm wanting to understand and I I'm wanting my students to understand

and then I also want to for example you brought in now interpretation as one form of inference making so I I if I'm thinking at a high level of skill when I say I I mean anyone but just using this term I so if I'm if I'm if I'm thinking at a high level of skill then I can listen to a person talk to me who's reasoning at a high level of skill and I can understand that person right but if I am not thinking at a high level of skill and this person is this

person's thinking is actually better than my thinking maybe they just have been around longer and learned more and they've put their mind into things that I haven't put my mind into much and so I'm listening and if I'm thinking at a high level of skill it doesn't mean I have their same level of knowledge but it means that I have the critical thinking abilities indeed yes yeah to hear what they're saying and to in the in certain cases leave behind maybe a whole lifetime of nonsense that I've been believing so that's also a very important

important part of inference making in other words you and it take take the opposite so you have someone who cannot hear a good argument cannot be moved by reason right of course is related to uh confidence in reason so this inference making these interpretations that we make must be made again as you say using adhering to intellectual standards yeah yeah yes I mean you mentioned about how inferences are often unconscious I mean our our our conscious life is filled with inferences and our conscious life can be as well but your example with with the small

children was you you look over there and you see what appears to be a flashlight moving over and and what do you infer what inference can you draw from that what do you infer and I would say in accord with what you were saying even saying what appears to be a flashlight you're already making an inference that the light you see is brought about by a flashlight and you actually made that prominent in what you said because you said it appears to be a flashlight draw draws our attention to the fact that it's an inference

but even if you hadn't said that you said there's somebody I see a flashlight over there notice that by itself is an inference you've made because what you see is a light moving around and you infer that it's caused by a flashlight so so very interesting how how not necessarily deep it goes but how thorough how thoroughgoing it is inferences and and uh that it brings up another point that I actually hadn't intended to talk about the classical account of re of reasoning as being centered on inference but I want to say that the ubiquity

of inferences the fact that we're always making inferences all the time means that there's something um I would say almost seductive and and dangerous about EMP overemphasizing inferences in this way um formal logic I'm not a fan of formal logic at all right for for many reasons um but formal logic was built on inferences so it built the whole thing on inferences so you had premises which would be information or an assumption and a conclusion based on that and that seemed fine to people for centuries and centuries but notice that there's no place in it

notice how different it is from using the elements of reasoning because there's no place in that classical account for what's your purpose in doing this whole thing what's your purpose in making that inference or the one you just mentioned thinking how how would Gerald look at it how or how would Richard look at it there was no account of looking at it from a different person's point of view with intellectual empathy many of the moves that we standardly make using the elements of reasoning and that we make in Li in our lives are not captured

by that argumentation model yes information and assumption leading to a conclusion um and yeah there's something tempting about that that no I am glad that you brought that you began with a little bit of a history of concept because this and that you're following up with with these further comments because and of course um my knowledge is limited in terms of traditional philosophy but the idea that you that you can boil reasoning down to premises and conclusions and of course as you said in premises we have Poss we have information Andor assumptions and so we

actually do have um in this case I'm sorry information and assumption so we actually do have three of the elements but if I mean if you want to be generous right but even that Linda is a is our is our reading in our I would say deeper understanding because when I learned logic there was no distinction between information and assumptions there were premises those pre and we would say some of those premises might be assumptions some of them might be information but no one ever said anything like that so it would so even those two

elements were not brought forward as part of uh of reasoning we treated all premises as assumptions um on the way to the conclusion that that's interesting yeah and I remember for me it was very confusing because Richard when I was starting to really learn the elements and going and and really beginning to get more better command of them he was then trying to teach me the traditional approach and I kept saying well why would you want to be teaching me that because that's obviously not I mean this is this is rich and full let's stay

over here why are we going back to that why do I need to that was just so confusing and because I was say why would they do that whenever obviously right because I'm introduced to this Rich concept right and you you that's sort of the way you think backwards so so why would I need to study that now when we've Advanced beyond that for the purpose of understanding reasoning and yeah and I would say that knowing what what was there before let you let you appreciate the richness of say the elements and the standards together

because if you're just presented with this as here's a here's here's a a very good way to reason and you do the elements of the standards and you put it Forward many times people will say oh yeah I see I I get that I would see why you emphasize purpose and point of view so it's just kind of more matter matter of fact not when you look into it deeply but if you know that past um yes yeah makes it's so true I was thinking that ex exact thing that this is one of the reasons

why I think critical thinking is so difficult for people to learn because the tools as they've been developed through these decades in our approach are now handed to you the reader on a silver platter so you don't have to work through it you don't have to figure out why purpose is one of the elements of reasoning you don't have to figure out why questions are at the heart of and you don't have to figure out if there are any other elements of reasoning right because that's already been dealt with in some way shape or form

and so the person this was one thing that was very interesting about working with Richard he rarely used um the elements of reasoning and intellectual standards terms in Daily discourse they were always moving in the back in the front and around his mind they were always there so he was he was using them but he wasn't necessarily stating right this purpose this question this so that is what we've all got to achieve if we're going to be having if we're going to have this Advanced toolbox of critical thinking in our minds and that means we

can't just say oh yeah purpose question information inferences yeah sure okay got that what else do you have oh well we've already been through a workshop where we talked about that we want to talk about something else now okay we got the elements we got the standards we got the traits oh how about if we come into your life and study your life for a day then you tell us you've got the element standards and the traits right because nobody does nobody nobody does is is fully com commanding the use of these throughout every moment

of their lives so um so this is this is this movement in history from an era really let's say up until the 1960s or so this traditional model that you have been talking we've been talking about and from philosophy was just assumed as reasoning and by the way this again is one of the main parts of the critique of Richard Paul's dissertation in 1965 so um then uh maybe maybe I don't have the date right but in in the 60s and so it laid the groundwork for the work that we're doing now because in that

dissertation he says look the way we're we're thinking about reasoning does is not helpful can't do anything with this you've got loans uh narrow thinking of logic in a very narrow way when actually in real life it's used in this very broad way how do what do we do about that how do we how do we know even how to analyze thinking and how do we know how to assess thinking we were we're hopeless we we don't have it figured out we've got all these technical terms we're supposed to be applying to everyday life and

it just doesn't work so uh this this is something that all of us need to be very aware of that we we can't just give lip service to this we can't just say yeah I got it that's a violin sounds beautiful now you play it so then some things that I want to just me mention and you this is something we've already talked about but basically just a to highlight it so what the way that I see us living a a human life is that we're continually inference making we're inference making creatures and if inferences

are steps of the mind then if and we make this move we realize we could make a different one this has all kinds of implications for our for example mental well-being our mental health so if you're making inferences that are getting you into trouble or if you're making inferences that are keeping you in a bad relationship then those need to be questioned right right so for example well he doesn't treat me that well but it could be wor wor that's an inference and the but it could be worse is probably being highlighted in the mind

right that that keeps you in the fear mode right I can't do any better that's an inference right I can't feel I can't I can't do anything to make my situation better that's an INF right I don't have any options that's an inference I have options different inference so in a way it makes it makes reasoning changing your reasoning look simple the way that I'm describing it but in a way logically it is that easy so I'm in I'm down in the dumps I don't want to do anything I feel bored okay so what can

you those are all inferences so instead of those what are some different inferences that could be made right right and even even the the way you said that one um you can see the slide from one thing to another and I'll explain slide in a moment how you say uh okay I'm in this relationship and but if I break up this relationship it could be worse could be worse and that's true that's true but then the slide is from it could be worse to something like it probably will be worse and then there's another slide

to say it will almost certainly be worse and each of those slides is an additional inference but I think those other two slides those other two inferences are unconscious ones that is we just we just slip from the fact that it could be worse too it will be worse so I'm gonna be I'm stuck here I have no options um but it shows something about how the the unconscious inferences and the conscious inferences interact with one another yeah and if we imagine an activity in which let's say tomorrow all day long you I everyone who's

with us would do this homework we just focus on our inferences now of course you're going to be living your life and doing whatever you're doing but you are highlighting the inferences you're making so and the one way to do this is to know for example like if you if I if I go and I pick up a book to and I sit down and read it then I can say what was my in what are what were my inferences before I did that so in other words you may not be aware at the moment

okay my inference is I'm going to pick up the book now and I'm going to enjoy some reading but that is what happens when you pick before you pick up the book or you might say I've got a little time now you're saying that in your mind into the privacy of your mind so we want to make those inferences a little more explicit in our practice so that we can begin to see the inference making and and I would I would say only I would add only that um we want to be more conscious of

the important inferences we're making the inferences that have a large impact on our lives have large implications for our lives because since inferences are all over the place if we spent our time just C oging all the inferences we're making we get lost in details yes but Gerald remember you you're aware of your inferences most people are not aware of their yeah that's right so you're right eventually we want to focus on our important inferences but for now I think we need to figure out what an inference is right I see what you right you

see and to do that you got to see yourself making an inference so your child throws something across the room you think something about the child what do you think um it's fine because he's allowed to do that he's enjoying himself or I've told him five hundred times not to do that in the house right right see you want to hear it like what is the voice what is the inference that you make your your your husband walks in the in the room what do you think what do you think what is your inference yeah

that's very nice and it just goes to the heart of critical thinking in that it's got that reflective step in it I mean we're making inferences all the time we're we're aware maybe here and there but most of the time we're just completely unaware of them and the critical thinking step is taking a step back and looking at my thinking and realizing oh okay that wasn't that was an inference that was an inference so I'm getting an insight into what an inference is operative in my life exactly so that when after I've done this a

hundred times then I become more aware of my inference making and then I transition from that let Hope to focusing on the important [Music] inferences so and by the way I never done this before what we're talking about it's it's something I've never thought of in exactly this way so but if you if you just when it's it's it's like you're slowing down your life for a day yeah and and you're it's akin to practice in let's say any any sport so when you do right when you do when you when you're learning to play

basketball you're running certain drills well you may not run any of those exact drills in a game right but you hopefully are learning the skills so that when you do play the game in other words now it's significant that you get it right right and that's the analogy then you're able to so what and I this relates to my belief that if we're not actively practicing critical thinking then we're not going to advance very far as critical thinkers that's right yeah it's got to be something that we do literally like someone who's at a professional

level of sports let's say tennis if you're this professional level of tennis how often do you think about tennis well reasoning has to take that place that that that same place in terms of significance in human life yeah right and these what we could call Micro steps or these you know slowing it down out when you you couldn't do this every day because it would be exhausting but you're just trying to do it long enough so that now you're seeing okay he he threw that ball I infer this what's going on is this a good

inference so there is a lot in this and then I just wanted to mention you also said your earliest your early statement see I've still got my notes in front of me that uh in the test that you are referring to that where students are asked to make inferences so this shows ignorance on the part of the test makers because it shows that they don't understand what an inference is they don't recognize that they're making inferences constantly and you already basically said this but I just wanted to kind of come on the backs of that

and stress this even more it's a common mistake in uh schooling and anytime we're misusing these terms then that's just taking us backwards in terms of critical thinking that's we've already got problems uh advancing critical thinking enough but when we add these confusions and these misunderstandings then uh We've really got problems and there is no excuse for it and so making an inference we need to all understand we're continually making them the question is are we making as it were good inferences or you could say reasonable inferences or you could say justifiable all of these

again being intellectual standards and you mentioned some other intellectual standards as well so we are not asking people to make inferences we are sick and tired of some of their inferences and the same for our own selves right many of our inferences are just nonsensical and they're getting us into trouble and they're making us feel bad about ourselves and our lives and we've got to make better inferences but we don't we don't that doesn't mean you just change what you think in context and so okay so somebody let's say you live with someone who's actually

not a nice person at all and then you actually do have options to get out but you tell yourself oh well you know in the past I've been making the inference that that he's bothering me now I'm GNA make the inference that he's not bothering me well but if the person keeps bullying you and doing things to you that are harmful to you you can't just make it in for an inference because you'd like to yeah yeah that's the standard there is realistic I mean there that's what we did haven't mentioned before but there's this

impression that I can change Reality by by thinking about it a different way and sometimes that's of course true but sometimes it's really not true if I interpret the person is not being very mean but he is very mean then then I'm I'm making an incorrect difference right and ruining my life in the process now if we're locked in a situation let's say you're a hostage then making inferences like I'm not going to let that bother me I'm being treated uh this in a brutish way I'm not going to let them get to me that's

when you would use that kind of thinking can depending on how horrible the circumstances are and all reasoning let us be reminded that all reasoning occurs in context and we're talking about generalizations here we're making General moves we're making we're we're coming up with general principles or we're discussing general principles that may not apply in a given extenuating circumstance right so in a borderline case or you know then we may think very differently so we don't want anyone to think that oh this is just very easy and if this guy's mistreating me then I can

just you know easily leave well maybe I can't maybe I've got to work some things out before I do maybe I have to really figure out the my best thinking before I do maybe I need to be careful even trying to leave this person maybe I'm in danger even trying to leave so I need to think well as well as I can there and think again realistically as you mentioned yeah yeah yeah if if a police officer stops you and says that you were you went through a stop sign and you think you didn't you

might you might think that the officer made an unjustified inference through an unjustified conclusion but that's a very different thing from saying to the officer you've made an unjustified inference uh that saying it doesn't follow even if you even if you come to the conclusion as saying it in certain circumstances can be a dangerous thing to do so now that adds the behavioral if you will or the action component so we make inferences and inference is happening in your mind in the human mind right and also in other animal minds but just sticking to humans

so we're making inferences but just because you make an inference like let's say he's being unfair to me right now let's say that's the inference and maybe it's true but that doesn't mean that I should behave in accordance with that indeed way of thinking so it's then we have to make another move which is yes but what do I do right now right another inference another another set of in yeah right there's a way in which I think making a move the phrase you we both use but you use a lot it making a move

uh move and reasoning I'm thinking those may always be inferences what making a move is maybe not I maybe overgeneralizing um well I think every time you do there there is inference making that's occurring in that right because even if you say well let's see what is our purpose right now well our purpose is X well did you infer that our purpose was X yeah yeah sort of like Concepts you can always push that one in because every element is a concept right right so this makes it a little confusing at times but I do

think that if we had command of all of these processes we would all reason at a higher level of quality and because we're making inferences continually therefore quickly so for example if I'm listening to you talk for 20 minutes then how many inferences do I have to make during that 20 minutes yeah that's probably right because every time you say something I have to make sense of it every single time and therefore of course I'm going to miss some of what was said and therefore I'm looking for the highlights you see these are all inferences

and um therefore again it's it's so they're so pervasive that it's hard to Target them like let's say you're standing in the kitchen let's say you're washing dishes in your mind is kind of wandering on this and that and the other thing and then you realiz then you can go into that and say well what are you really thinking about right now Linda like are you are you what is the quality of your thinking right now are you relaxing your mind are you worrying about something are you um whatever people do are you person may

that you know may be becoming very irritated because of something that someone else said to them earlier they may be standing there feeling resentment because the way they're treated so what is going on in the privacy of your mind it gets at that as well what are you your mind is going from this to that to this to that to this to that these are not necessarily all inferences because you may be just kind of daydreaming so to speak well I I'd like to talk a little bit about inferences and information and assumptions and the

differences uh between between them or among them um and um someone someone asked me recently in a in a webinar um a teacher who said how can I convey the difference between assumptions uh and inferences or conclusions to my students the difference between assumptions and conclusions to my students and I said well just my just my analogy my illustration so well uh the conclusion is is like you're driving home and your conclusion is home and your assumptions are the streets you use to get home um so that's my rough analogy for what for how an

assumption works and um and it's it's it's an all right illustration I think but it leaves something out and I don't have an answer to this one I think maybe if I dwelt on it I could but it I same thing could be said for information that is information can be the streets I use to drive home assumptions can be the the streets I use to drive home or home is the conclusion and I don't have a good illustration for the difference between assumption and information I don't have a nice analogy that captures that difference

but maybe someone who's listening to email email well it's interesting that that your your training in traditional pH philosophy which mixes together in information and assumption as premises right may be part of the analogy here but the way that I think about the relationship between the three inferences in in information and assumptions is more in terms of a visual image so we have information that could be a situation that we're faced with could be something we're reading can be something that somebody just said can be some data we're looking at could be our experiences and

so forth there can be other um ways of delineate information and so we're we're looking at a situation I'm looking at a situation for example and from that situation I make an inference and that inference comes through my assumption base okay and the Assumption the Assumption or it could be a set of assumptions depending on how complicated the situation is but let's just say in a an assumption leads me to the inference taking into account the information in other words the information is still seen through the Assumption and it is really the assumpt the assumption

that drives the way we interpret the information and therefore the Assumption lies as an assumption it lies at the unconscious level of thought and of course we'll get into assumptions in another podcast but it's at the unconscious level but we don't just see H how like I see I see a light next door in the middle of the night well I have to make some sense of that light if I'm trying to make sense of it how do I make sense of it well I make sense of it based on what I assume about situations

like this what I assume about a light itself so you assume that if you see something like this in the middle of the light night something is unusual at minimum but maybe not maybe you just haven't been down in the middle of the night and actually somebody that lives next door is has insomnia and they come down the same time it's like two in the morning and you you see you've only seen it once but you assume that you you you you you're assumptions sort of G they give you the terrain from which to draw

your conclusion so you you have some knowledge prior knowledge that's another way of thinking of it of Lights in this situation um and these assumptions because they are taken for granted they're lying at the unconscious level and they are difficult to figure out they're more difficult let's say than the information so let me give an example if I could do that so um this is from by the way our book entitled critical thinking tools for taking charge of your professional and personal life you're wanting to learn critical thinking those of you who are joining us

this is a good book to learn from in terms of the overall conception M and so this I'm looking at the chapter six on the parts of thinking page 113 and here's some here are some examples that of um where we can distinguish between information and and assumptions what would you infer in this instant in these instances if it were 12 [Music] noon so you might infer it's time for lunch okay something simple like that so if it it's 12 noon okay so I'm looking at the clock it's 12 noon that's the information from this

I infer in this case it's time for lunch that why would I infer that because I always have lunch at 12 minut and that's an assumption lunch happens at 12 noon right and so let let me go back to the classic conception of logic or of reasoning and the account that they offer this is one conception of how an assumption works that is a an assumption is kind of a bridge that takes you to the conclusion from wherever you start so you start with it's noon and the bridge and the and conclusion you're drawing is

it's time to eat and the bridge the assumption is uh I always eat at noon or noon is the time we should eat and that's one of the conceptions of an assumption that is a kind of a bridge that you to your conclusion it's not the it's not the only it's not the only concept of an assumption because if I if I uh if because I could say well I assume it's about noon and and I also assume that it's that IAT at noon around noon so I should draw the conclusion both of those could

be assumptions and I could draw the conclusion from it that is I don't look at my watch I just feel oh I think it's around noon so it's an assumption um it's not information and it seems like that's an inference well they're all inferences i' say um I mean well it depends on how it's being used in the reasoning so if you're taking it for granted me meaning that you're not questioning it right and you're not even really probably aware of it right and it's functioning as that bridge that you mentioned which I think is

a good analogy by the way is then it is serving as an assumption so the information you said see you said something like I think it's about 12 noon I think it's about noon yeah just feels like noon that that's an INF and from that you basically um so yeah I mean that's that's my reading and then I always eat at 12 noon because say let's say you think well it's probably 12 noon you start walking to the kitchen or wherever you eat then the assumption is I always eat at this time and somehow you've

decided that it is 12: noon so it's it's a similar situation as far as I can tell but let let's go to another one okay um there are black clouds in the sky in that's the information okay it's probably going to rain right inference right assumption Whenever there are clouds in the sky that look like that it's probably going to rain right right now this um happened yesterday this shows you how the opposite can work very trival trivial example maybe not not for those of us who live in California so last night kind of you

know late in the evening it looked like it was misting it was a little water out and you know we we have it's not our rainy season and we're not supposed to be getting water right now and we don't get rain right we don't get rain this time of year that's the assumption but it actually did slightly rain like all night long and that all of the people that were around were surprised because it's not supposed to rain right now you see that's our assumption but it did so some people you know didn't bring in

their furniture or whatever because they see they didn't they assumed it can't it can't rain this time of year right right so we are continually making these inferences and these based on assumptions and they can be rather trivial but that they may not be trivial right as you delve in it's it's difficult to keep things from becoming too complicated um and inference is a good way to make things complicated because um because because there's a sense in which and and you said this earlier there's a sense in which everything is an inference uh like when

you say there are black clouds in the sky that's a piece of information but it's also an inference that you draw from what you've just seen like your flashlight example you see the light if it's a flashlight so when I gather information and I interpret it a certain way there are black clouds in the sky um then I'm drawing a conclusion but that conclusion is a piece of information I'm hoping I'm not going to make it too complicated and something of similar is true with assumptions that is there's a way in which um I mean

you know this and you've said this you said this just a little while ago we have the eight elements but you could take any one of those elements and analyze it in terms of the other seven right so I can analyze information in terms of what I what assumptions do I make when I say there's a black cloud in the sky I assumption my I assume that my my my vision is working well that there are no odd odd characteristics of the sky no meteorological anomalies that I know of so I'm making assumptions and I'm

also but I'm drawing a conclusion that there are black clouds in the sky and that functions as information I'm making it too too complicated yeah no that that that that is too complicated and the way to the usefulness here for me is so if I let's say you're planning anything you're planning to get a different car you're planning to get a different house you know anything that's requiring this a significant issue in your life you're going to let let's just take a car for example you need to get a different car yours is you know

Kut and so to make a good decision on that yeah to make to make the best decision in this case you're going to have to make some very good inferences you're going to have to have certain kinds of information had better know the difference between the information as in the facts right versus your reading of the facts right and the assumptions you're making that take you from one to the other exactly right and if you if you use the elements of reasoning in this way then they're very powerful because you can say what is what

let's say this is actually a good uh example for doing the the the full logic of the problem because it's a big it's an important issue for you you the stakes are relatively high for you uh financially let's just say in terms of Hassle and headache and so it so it makes sense to really put your mind into this so you might write out the the full logic what is my purpose what am I Really Trying what what am I trying to accomplish here what information what is my key question well I know that what

car should I purchase or or lease or whatever the case may be now what information do I need to to use to answer this so what and then you would have to say well okay I'm concerned about safety I'm concerned about the cost concerned about whether it's a electric vehicle or gas so this is all in the information begins in the information category and then once I have all that information that I think is relevant to the question hopefully I've got I've got it all the significant information relevant to the question then I've got to

interpret that information right and make finally make a decision in the end the final move will be a decision in that process I'll also uncover assumptions I'm making and I may not need to write out all of this because I may when I'm writing out my purpose I can see some of my assumptions sure but it's still essential for us to be able to pull apart the elements and understand these elements and not overwork the piece so to speak overwork it and make it too complicated so then it's no it's no longer useful right yeah

well Gerald I think that we should close there I think that it's a it's a very exciting uh thing to talk about ideas and to explore these elements of reasoning at deeper levels yes and I enjoy I always enjoy our discussions me too because I feel that we actually do communicate yeah and one thing I like is that you you your examples tend to be real life kind of action oriented examples decisionmaking examples and real life ones that people actually face so it's very different from the philosophical background that I come from well we we

we uh we've all we've got more Theory to work through and we need more people doing this with us we need more serious Scholars of the theory of critical thinking and it needs to continue to expand in many directions which is what we're trying to do um you and I together we need more people in this with us and with that I will close thank you Gerald thank you Linda enjoyable talking with you and uh just talking about inferences in general yeah and yes and thank you to everyone for joining us and we'll see you

next time good night