BCS 111 Chapter 14: Textbook Reading 14

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Course: BCS 111
• Professor: Yang

Document Summary

When reasoning, we have one or more particular goals in mind. Reasoning involves inferences or conclusions drawn from other information. Some of these conclusions involve new information, but many are so mundane that we may not even notice that we have done any mental work to draw them. Deductive reasoning goes from the general to the specific. Inductive reasoning goes from the specific to the general. Deductive reasoning, if performed correctly, results in conclusions that have deductive validity. An argument is deductively valid if and only if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion(s) to be false. If you start with true premises and reason according to logical principles, the conclusion you come to cannot be false. Deductive validity is a property that holds only for deductive reasoning. With inductive reasoning, you can"t be certain of the conclusions . you can only have stronger or weaker confidence in them.