Colloquium Talk: "Primordial Inference" by Dr. Nic Koziolek
Primordial Inference
My aim in this talk is to show that, in the most fundamental case—the primordial case—to infer is to come to know some particular fact directly on the basis of some other particular fact. Crucially, such primordial inferences, as I’ll call them, involve no knowledge whatsoever of any general fact (whether universal or generic). But they do always involve (not only the existence of an appropriate general fact, but also, more importantly) an appropriate historical relation of the subject of the inference to that general fact: a relation, however, not (again) of knowing, but of having been shaped by. Roughly put, the subject of a primordial inference from p to q must be disposed to infer q from p; must be so disposed because, in her world and circumstances, q is generally (either universally or generically) true whenever p is true; and must exercise that disposition in judging that q. I will also suggest, in closing, that a suitably reflective subject of a primordial inference is in a position to come to know the general fact by which she’s been shaped, simply by reflecting on her disposition to infer particular facts of the conclusion-sort from particular facts of the premise-sort.
