Dialectic Inference and Its Chances

Instead of merely inferring that our beliefs are related to facts, I will contend that what matters is the logic of their inferential form. This will disclose what is truly true for their relationship, not just what is true for experience. Given one-sided and two-sided inferences, the conditions of their functional relationship will be consistent within a square of opposition; for contraries, contradictions, and sub-contraries in a way that probability theory does not. The two-sided idea of inferences in this inferences model will also have a modal value for its relationship to the one-sided concept of inferences. By suggesting that Empirical, Formal, Speculative and an Intuitionist Speculative understandings of logic will have a modal identity within a dialectical principle that I will present. Dialectic will therefore not be assumed to depend on the arguments of a dialog, but is closer to Plato’s exposition of it in The Republic, of eliminating assumptions to get to the highest standpoint of a principle.