3 Ways to Draw an Inference
Humans draw inferences in 3 ways:
1) deduction
2) induction
3) simple enumeration
There are some who would bat an eye at the above. They would argue that (2) and (3) denote the same method, only with different connotation. Many textbooks have been written under that premise (i.e., that "induction" = simple enumeration). I disagree with that. A lot of understanding might be gleaned from comparing and contrasting the ways that humans draw inferences with the single way that animals do.
Of interesting note is that animals also draw inferences, using (3) from above, even though they only have perceptual powers of awareness (animals do not engage in the intellectual process of concept formation). The reason that they can do this is because simple enumeration does not require the formation of concepts (it can be performed entirely in the perceptual realm of mental activity). Another term for this perceptual activity is "crude association."
An example of an animal drawing an inference via enumeration would be when a dog who had been kicked by a man in uniform goes ahead and takes it upon himself to bark at (or to even bite at) all men in uniform after that. In this case, the enumeration was really, really simple -- it involved a generalization from only 1 instance. It is not a valid generalization, but that is to be expected, because simple enumeration does not produce valid generalizations.
Item (2) is a process that requires concept formation, and proceeds in a manner similar to concept formation (where 2 or more things are witnessed as to be sharing some common feature, often against a backdrop of the rest of the world -- which either lacks the feature entirely, or has the feature in a subordinate relation to other features).
An example of induction would be Newton's 3 Laws of Motion, wherein particular things were observed to be behaving in the same way all of the time. If we were to just stop there and generalize, then we would have accidentally used simple enumeration to arrive at our inference or generalization. In order to fully complete the process of induction, we would need to take further steps regarding the correct conceptual understanding of various matters such as "force", "mass", "acceleration" and the like.
You can only perform induction after you have worked hard to arrive at a correct conceptual understanding of the dynamics or mechanics (the interrelation of relevant entities) of the matter in question -- though you can perform simple enumeration without a correct conceptual understanding of anything.
Ed
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