2. Scientific Inferences

Question 1

What is inference?

Answer 1

An act or a process of reaching a conclusion from a set of premises, which can express, for instance, known facts or evidence.

Question 2

What is a premise?

Answer 2

A statement in an argument that justifies a conclusion.

Question 3

What is a conclusion?

Answer 3

A statement that follows logically from premises.

Question 4

What is direct inference?

Answer 4

Inductive inference from a proportion in a sample to a population.

Question 5

What is generalization?

Answer 5

Inductive inference from a sample to a general conclusion.

Question 6

What is projection?

Answer 6

Inductive inference from past samples to future samples. Distinguish from prediction; projection is one way to make predictions.

Question 7

What is inductive inference?

Answer 7

The premises support the conclusion but do not guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

Question 8

What is deductive inference?

Answer 8

In a valid deductive inference, true premises necessitate the truth of the conclusion.

Question 9

What is a conditional claim?

Answer 9

A claim involving the logical operator ‘if’, for instance of the form ‘if A then B’.

Question 10

What is modus ponens?

Answer 10

A deductive inference of the form: (i) if A then B, (ii) A, therefore (iii) B.

Question 11

What is modus tollens?

Answer 11

A deductive inference of the form: (i) if A then B, (ii) Not B, therefore (iii) Not A.

Question 12

What does ampliative mean?

Answer 12

Inferences that go beyond what is stated in the premises; in particular, inductive inferences are ampliative.

Question 13

What does explicative mean?

Answer 13

Inferences that do not go beyond what is stated (implicitly) in the premises; in particular, deductive inferences are explicative.

Question 14

What is truth preservation?

Answer 14

The conclusion must be true if the premises are true; see deductive inference.

Question 15

What is fallibility?

Answer 15

The conclusion can be false even if the premises are true.

Question 16

What is infinite regress?

Answer 16

A never-ending chain of propositions being justified by other propositions which in turn are justified by other propositions and so on.

Question 17

What is fundamentalism?

Answer 17

Propositions are justified by being inferred from foundational premises which do not need additional justification, for instance necessarily true premises.

Question 18

What is coherentism?

Answer 18

Propositions are justified by being compatible with a coherent set of propositions, where each proposition in the set is compatible with every other proposition in the set.

Question 19

What is falsification?

Answer 19

Rejecting a hypothesis as a result of an empirical test.

Question 20

What is confirmation?

Answer 20

Increasing the confidence in a hypothesis as a result of an empirical test.

Question 21

What is a hypothesis?

Answer 21

A proposition that can be true or false but is not necessarily true or false, and that preferably either has some generality or is about something not directly observable.

Question 22

What is a tautology?

Answer 22

A proposition which is necessarily true.

Question 23

What is direct observation?

Answer 23

Observations of objects and properties that are accessible through the use of human senses.

Question 24

What is operationalization?

Answer 24

A way to measure something which cannot be directly observed or that cannot be observed directly with sufficient precision, by connecting this feature with something causally connected to something that can be observed directly.

Question 25

What is the asymmetry between falsification and confirmation?

Answer 25

No amount of confirming observations can deductively confirm the hypothesis, but one falsifying observation can deductively falsify the hypothesis.

Question 26

What is falsificationism?

Answer 26

The view that science should proceed only through valid falsification, and never use confirmation.

Question 27

What does it mean for a hypothesis to be falsifiable?

Answer 27

A hypothesis is falsifiable if it is possible to show that it is false, even if it has not yet been shown to be false.

Question 28

What is demarcation of science?

Answer 28

Distinguishing science from non-science by proving criteria for counting something as science.

Question 29

What is corroboration?

Answer 29

A hypothesis is corroborated if it has withstood multiple falsification attempts.

Question 30

What is an auxiliary hypothesis?

Answer 30

A hypothesis used to test another hypothesis, but which one does not intend to test, for instance background assumptions necessary to infer the empirical conclusion.

Question 31

What is conjunction?

Answer 31

Two propositions joined by the logical operator AND. The conjunction is true if and only if both propositions are true.

Question 32

What is the Duhem-Quine thesis?

Answer 32

No hypothesis can be tested without the use of auxiliary hypotheses.

Question 33

What does ad hoc mean in the context of claims?

Answer 33

The modification of a claim is ad hoc if the claim has previously been falsified, the modification saves the claim from this falsification, and it makes the claim less falsifiable.

Question 34

What is frequentism?

Answer 34

Probabilities are frequencies of repeatable observational events.

Question 35

What is under-determination?

Answer 35

An inference is underdetermined if multiple conclusions would be supported by the premises.

Question 36

What is a severe test?

Answer 36

A hypothesis test is a severe test if the probability to observe a consequence would be low if the hypothesis were false.

Question 37

What is the base-rate fallacy?

Answer 37

Initial confidence in a hypothesis is not taken into account when performing a statistical hypothesis test.