Inferences

All flowers are purple. All trees are flowers. Therefore, all trees are purple. Reading this, you may think that the first two sentences are false, as well as the conclusion itself. However, the conclusion that “all trees are purple” is actually valid in terms of inferential logic.

Inferences are steps in reasoning. They connect premises — which are propositions upon which an argument is based — with consequences.¹ Humans are able to make inferences based on our conceptual knowledge and schemas, cognitive frameworks that organize information and provide shortcuts when interpreting information. Inferential logic is commonly done through one of two ways:

1. Deductive reasoning: drawing implicit conclusions from the premises (i.e. Someone gives you a bag of coins and tells you it is full of pennies. Based on this, you expect every coin you pull from the bag to be a penny).
2. Inductive reasoning: using various specific premises to draw a universal conclusion (i.e. You pull a penny from a bag of coins, followed by a second and third penny. You infer that all coins in the bag are pennies).

Aside from the theory associated with inferential logic, inferences are found in daily life, applied to perception, reading, statistics, and even artificial intelligence.