Deductive and Inductive Arguments

In philosophy, an argument consists of a set of statements called premises

that serve as grounds for affirming another statement called the conclusion.
Philosophers typically distinguish arguments in natural languages (such as
English) into two fundamentally different types: deductive and inductive.
Each type of argument is said to have characteristics that categorically
distinguish it from the other type. The two types of argument are also said
to be subject to differing evaluative standards. Pointing to paradigmatic
examples of each type of argument helps to clarify their key differences.
The distinction between the two types of argument may hardly seem worthy
of philosophical reflection, as evidenced by the fact that their differences
are usually presented as straightforward, such as in many introductory
philosophy textbooks. Nonetheless, the question of how best to distinguish
deductive from inductive arguments, and indeed whether there is a coherent
categorical distinction between them at all, turns out to be considerably
more problematic than commonly recognized. This article identifies and
discusses a range of different proposals for marking categorical differences
between deductive and inductive arguments while highlighting the
problems and limitations attending each. Consideration is also given to the
ways in which one might do without a distinction between two types of
argument by focusing instead solely on the application of evaluative
standards to arguments.
1. Introduction
In philosophy, an argument consists of a set of statements called premises
that serve as grounds for affirming another statement called the conclusion.
Philosophers typically distinguish arguments in natural languages (such as
English) into two fundamentally different kinds: deductive and inductive.
(Matters become more complicated when considering arguments
in formal systems of logic as well as in the many forms of non-classical logic.
Readers are invited to consult the articles on Logic in this encyclopedia to
explore some of these more advanced topics.) In the philosophical
literature, each type of argument is said to have characteristics that
categorically distinguish it from the other type.
Deductive arguments are sometimes illustrated by providing an example in
which an argument’s premises logically entail its conclusion. For example:
Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Assuming the truth of the two premises, it seems that it simply must be the
case that Socrates is mortal. According to this view, then, this would be a
deductive argument.
By contrast, inductive arguments are said to be those that make their
conclusions merely probable. They might be illustrated by an example like
the following:

Most Greeks eat olives.

Socrates is a Greek.
Therefore, Socrates eats olives.

Assuming the truth of those premises, it is likely that Socrates eats olives,
but that is not guaranteed. According to this view, this argument is
inductive.
This way of viewing arguments has a long history in philosophy. An explicit
distinction between two fundamentally distinct argument types goes back
to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) who, in his works on logic (later dubbed “The
Organon”, meaning “the instrument”) distinguished syllogistic reasoning
(sullogismos) from “reasoning from particulars to universals” (epagôgê).
Centuries later, induction was famously advertised by Francis Bacon (1561-
1626) in his New Organon (1620) as the royal road to knowledge,
while Rationalist mathematician-philosophers, such as René
Descartes (1596-1650) in his Discourse on the Method (1637), favored
deductive methods of inquiry. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) discussed the
distinction in the context of science in his essay, “Induction and Deduction
in Physics” (1919). Much contemporary professional philosophy, especially
in the Analytic tradition, focuses on presenting and critiquing deductive and
inductive arguments while considering objections and responses to them. It
is therefore safe to say that a distinction between deductive and inductive
arguments is fundamental to argument analysis in philosophy.
Although a distinction between deductive and inductive arguments is deeply
woven into philosophy, and indeed into everyday life, many people probably
first encounter an explicit distinction between these two kinds of argument
in a pedagogical context. For example, students taking an elementary logic,
critical thinking, or introductory philosophy course might be introduced to
the distinction between each type of argument and be taught that each have
their own standards of evaluation. Deductive arguments may be said to
be valid or invalid, and sound or unsound. A valid deductive argument is one
whose logical structure or form is such that if the premises are true, the
conclusion must be true. A sound argument is a valid argument with true
premises. Inductive arguments, by contrast, are said to be strong or weak,
and, although terminology varies, they may also be considered cogent or not
cogent. A strong inductive argument is said to be one whose premises
render the conclusion likely. A cogent argument is a strong argument with
true premises. All arguments are made better by having true premises, of
course, but the differences between deductive and inductive arguments
concern structure, independent of whether the premises of an argument are
true, which concerns semantics.
The distinction between deductive and inductive arguments is considered
important because, among other things, it is crucial during argument
analysis to apply the right evaluative standards to any argument one is
considering. Indeed, it is not uncommon to be told that in order to assess
any argument, three steps are necessary. First, one is to determine whether
the argument being considered is a deductive argument or an inductive one.
Second, one is to then determine whether the argument is valid or invalid.
Finally, one is to determine whether the argument is sound or unsound
(Teays 1996).

All of this would seem to be amongst the least controversial topics in

philosophy. Controversies abound in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
(such as those exhibited in the contexts of Ancient and Environmental Ethics,
just to name a couple). By contrast, the basic distinctions between
deductive and inductive arguments seem more solid, more secure; in short,
more settled than those other topics. Accordingly, one might expect an
encyclopedic article on deductive and inductive arguments to simply report
the consensus view and to clearly explain and illustrate the distinction for
readers not already familiar with it. However, the situation is made more
difficult by three facts.
First, there appear to be other forms of argument that do not fit neatly into
the classification of deductive or inductive arguments. Govier (1987) calls
the view that there are only two kinds of argument (that is, deductive and
inductive) “the positivist theory of argument”. She believes that it naturally
fits into, and finds justification within, a positivist epistemology, according
to which knowledge must be either a priori (stemming from logic or
mathematics, deploying deductive arguments) or a posteriori (stemming
from the empirical sciences, using inductive arguments). She points out that
arguments as most people actually encounter them assume such a wide
variety of forms that the “positivist theory of argument” fails to account for
a great many of them.
Second, it can be difficult to distinguish arguments in ordinary, everyday
discourse as clearly either deductive or inductive. The supposedly sharp
distinction tends to blur in many cases, calling into question whether the
binary nature of the deductive-inductive distinction is correct.
Third (this point being the main focus of this article), a perusal of
elementary logic and critical thinking texts, as well as other presentations
aimed at non-specialist readers, demonstrates that there is in fact no
consensus about how to draw the supposedly straightforward deductive-
inductive argument distinction, as least within the context of introducing
the distinction to newcomers. Indeed, proposals vary from locating the
distinction within subjective, psychological states of arguers to objective
features of the arguments themselves, with other proposals landing
somewhere in-between.
Remarkably, not only do proposals vary greatly, but the fact that they do so
at all, and that they generate different and indeed incompatible conceptions
of the deductive-inductive argument distinction, also seems to go largely
unremarked upon by those advancing such proposals. Many authors
confidently explain the distinction between deductive and inductive
arguments without the slightest indication that there are other apparently
incompatible ways of making such a distinction. Moreover, there appears to
be little scholarly discussion concerning whether the alleged distinction
even makes sense in the first place. That there is a coherent, unproblematic
distinction between deductive and inductive arguments, and that the
distinction neatly assigns arguments to one or the other of the two non-
overlapping kinds, is an assumption that usually goes unnoticed and
unchallenged. Even a text with the title Philosophy of Logics (Haack 1978)
makes no mention of this fundamental philosophical problem.
A notable exception has already been mentioned in Govier (1987), who
explicitly critiques what she calls “the hallowed old distinction between
inductive and deductive arguments.” However, her insightful discussion
turns out to be the exception that proves the rule. Her critique appears not
to have awoken philosophers from their dogmatic slumbers concerning the
aforementioned issues of the deductive-inductive argument classification.
Moreover, her discussion, while perceptive, does not engage the issue with
the level of sustained attention that it deserves, presumably because her
primary concerns lay elsewhere. In short, the problem of distinguishing
between deductive and inductive arguments seems not to have registered
strongly amongst philosophers. A consequence is that the distinction is
often presented as if it were entirely unproblematic. Whereas any number
of other issues are subjected to penetrating philosophical analysis, this
fundamental issue typically traipses past unnoticed.

Accordingly, this article surveys, discusses, and assesses a range of

common (and other not-so-common) proposals for distinguishing between
deductive and inductive arguments, ranging from psychological approaches
that locate the distinction within the subjective mental states of arguers, to
approaches that locate the distinction within objective features of
arguments themselves. It aims first to provide a sense of the
remarkable diversity of views on this topic, and hence of the significant,
albeit typically unrecognized, disagreements concerning this issue. Along
the way, it is pointed out that none of the proposed distinctions populating
the relevant literature are entirely without problems. This is especially the
case when related to other philosophical views which many philosophers
would be inclined to accept, although some of the problems that many of
the proposed distinctions face may be judged to be more serious than
others.
In light of these difficulties, a fundamentally different approach is then
sketched: rather than treating a categorical deductive-inductive argument
distinction as entirely unproblematic (as a great many authors do), these
problems are made explicit so that emphasis can be placed on the need to
develop evaluative procedures for assessing arguments without identifying
them as strictly “deductive” or “inductive.” This evaluative approach to
argument analysis respects the fundamental rationale for distinguishing
deductive from inductive arguments in the first place, namely as a tool for
helping one to decide whether the conclusion of any argument deserves
assent. Such an approach bypasses the problems associated
with categorical approaches that attempt to draw a sharp distinction
between deductive and inductive arguments. Ultimately, the deductive-
inductive argument distinction should be dispensed with entirely, a move
which is no doubt a counterintuitive conclusion for some that nonetheless
can be made plausible by attending to the arguments that follow.
First, a word on strategy. Each of the proposals considered below will be
presented from the outset in its most plausible form in order to see why it
might seem attractive, at least initially so. The consequences of accepting
each proposal are then delineated, consequences that might well give one
pause in thinking that the deductive-inductive argument distinction in
question is satisfactory.

2. Psychological Approaches
Perhaps the most popular approach to distinguish between deductive and
inductive arguments is to take a subjective psychological state of the agent
advancing a given argument to be the crucial factor. For example, one
might be informed that whereas a deductive argument is intended to
provide logically conclusive support for its conclusion, an inductive
argument is intended to provide only probable, but not conclusive, support
(Barry 1992; Vaughn 2010; Harrell 2016; and many others). Some accounts
of this sort could hardly be more explicit that such psychological
factors alone are the key factor. From this perspective, then, it may be said
that the difference between deductive and inductive arguments does not lie
in the words used within the arguments, but rather in the intentions of the
arguer. That is to say, the difference between each type of argument comes
from the relationship the arguer takes there to be between the premises
and the conclusion. If the arguer believes that the truth of the
premises definitely establishes the truth of the conclusion, then the
argument is deductive. If the arguer believes that the truth of the premises
provides only good reasons to believe the conclusion is probably true, then
the argument is inductive. According to this psychological account, the
distinction between deductive and inductive arguments is determined
exclusively by the intentions and/or beliefs of the person advancing an
argument.
This psychological approach entails some interesting, albeit often
unacknowledged, consequences. Because the difference between deductive
and inductive arguments is said to be determined entirely by what an
arguer intends or believes about any given argument, it follows that what is
ostensibly the very same argument may be equally both
deductive and inductive.
An example may help to illustrate this point. If person A believes that the
premise in the argument “Dom Pérignon is a champagne; so, it is made in
France” definitely establishes its conclusion (perhaps on the grounds that
“champagne” is a type of sparkling wine produced only in the Champagne
wine region of France), then according to the psychological approach being
considered, this would be a deductive argument. However, if person B
believes that the premise of the foregoing argument provides only good
reasons to believe that the conclusion is true (perhaps because they think of
“champagne” as merely any sort of fizzy wine), then the argument in
question is also an inductive argument. Therefore, it is entirely possible on
this psychological view for the same argument to be both a
deductive and an inductive argument. It is a deductive argument because of
what person A believes. It is also an inductive argument because of what
person B believes. Indeed, this consequence need not
involve different individuals at all. This result follows even if the same
individual maintains different beliefs and/or intentions with respect to the
argument’s strength at different times.
The belief-relativity inherent in this psychological approach is not by itself
an objection, much less a decisive one. Olson (1975) explicitly advances
such an account, and frankly embraces its intention- or belief-relative
consequences. Perhaps the fundamental nature of arguments is relative to
individuals’ intentions or beliefs, and thus the same argument can be both
deductive and inductive. However, this psychological approach does place
logical constraints on what else one can coherently claim. For example, one
cannot coherently maintain that, given the way the terms ‘deductive
argument’ and ‘inductive argument’ are categorized here, an argument is
always one or the other and never both. If this psychological account of the
deductive-inductive argument distinction is accepted, then the latter claim
is necessarily false.
Of course, there is a way to reconcile the psychological approach
considered here with the claim that an argument is either
deductive or inductive, but never both. One could opt to individuate
arguments on the basis of individuals’ specific intentions or beliefs about
them. In this more sophisticated approach, what counts as a specific
argument would depend on the intentions or beliefs regarding it. So, for
example, if person A believes that “Dom Pérignon is a champagne; so, it is
made in France” definitely establishes the truth of its conclusion, while
person B believes that “Dom Pérignon is a champagne; so, it is made in
France” provides only good reasons for thinking that its conclusion is true,
then there isn’t just one argument here after all. Rather, according to this
more sophisticated account, there are two distinct arguments here that just
happen to be formulated using precisely the same words. According to this
view, the belief that there is just one argument here would be naïve. Hence,
it could still be the case that any argument is deductive or inductive, but
never both. Arguments just need to be multiplied as needed.
However, this more sophisticated strategy engenders some interesting
consequences of its own. Since intentions and beliefs can vary in clarity,
intensity, and certainty, any ostensible singular argument may turn out to
represent as many distinct arguments as there are persons considering a
given inference. So, for example, what might initially have seemed like a
single argument (say, St. Anselm of Canterbury‘s famous ontological
argument for the existence of God) might turn out in this view to
be any number of different arguments because different thinkers may
harbor different degrees of intention or belief about how well the
argument’s premises support its conclusion.
On a similar note, the same ostensible single argument may turn out to be
any number of arguments if the same individual entertains different
intentions or beliefs (or different degrees of intention or belief) at different
times concerning how well its premises support its conclusion, as when one
reflects upon an argument for some time. Again, this is not necessarily an
objection to this psychological approach, much less a decisive one. A
proponent of this psychological approach could simply bite the bullet and
concede that what at first appeared to be a single argument may in fact be
many.
Be that as it may, there are yet other logical consequences of adopting such
a psychological account of the deductive-inductive argument distinction
that, taken together with the foregoing considerations, may raise doubts
about whether such an account could be the best way to capture the
relevant distinction. Because intentions and beliefs are not publicly
accessible, and indeed may not always be perfectly transparent even to
oneself, confident differentiation of deductive and inductive arguments may
be hard or even impossible in many, or even in all, cases. For example, in
cases where one does not or cannot know what the arguer’s intentions or
beliefs are (or were), it is necessarily impossible to identify which type of
argument it is, assuming, again, that it must be either one type or the other.
If the first step in evaluating an argument is determining which type of
argument it is, one cannot even begin.
In response, it might be advised to look for the use of indicator words or
phrases as clues to discerning an arguer’s intentions or beliefs. The use of
words like “necessarily,” or “it follows that,” or “therefore it must be the
case that” could be taken to indicate that the arguer intends the argument
to definitely establish its conclusion, and therefore, according to the
psychological proposal being considered, one might judge it to be a
deductive argument. Alternatively, the use of words like “probably,” “it is
reasonable to conclude,” or “it is likely” could be interpreted to indicate
that the arguer intends only to make the argument’s conclusion probable.
One might judge it to be an inductive argument on that basis.
However, while indicator words or phrases may suggest specific
interpretations, they need to be viewed in context, and are far from
infallible guides. At best, they are indirect clues as to what any
arguer might believe or intend. Someone may say one thing, but intend or
believe something else. This need not involve intentional lying. Intentions
and beliefs are often opaque, even to the person whose intentions and
beliefs they are. Moreover, they are of limited help in providing an
unambiguous solution in many cases. Consider the following example:
Most Major League Baseball outfielders consistently have batting averages
over .250. Since Ken Singleton played centerfield for the Orioles for three
consecutive years, he must have been batting over .250 when he was
traded.

If one takes seriously the “must have” clause in the last sentence, it might
be concluded that the proponent of this argument intended to provide a
deductive argument and thus, according to the psychological approach,
it is a deductive argument. If one is not willing to ascribe that intention to
the argument’s author, it might be concluded that he meant to advance
an inductive argument. In some cases, it simply cannot be known. To offer
another example, consider this argument:
It has rained every day so far this month.
If it has rained every day so far this month, then probably it will rain today.
Therefore, probably it will rain today.

The word “probably” appears twice, suggesting that this may be an

inductive argument. Yet, many would agree that the argument’s conclusion
is “definitely established” by its premises. Consequently, while being on the
lookout for the appearance of certain indicator words is a commendable
policy for dealing fairly with the arguments one encounters, it does not
provide a perfectly reliable criterion for categorically distinguishing
deductive and inductive arguments.

This consequence might be viewed as merely an inconvenient limitation on

human knowledge, lamentably another instance of which there already are
a great many. However, there is a deeper worry associated with a
psychological approach than has been considered thus far. Recall that a
common psychological approach distinguishes deductive and inductive
arguments in terms of the intentions or beliefs of the arguer with respect to
any given argument being considered. If the arguer intends or believes the
argument to be one that definitely establishes its conclusion, then it is a
deductive argument. If the arguer intends or believes the argument to be
one that merely makes its conclusion probable, then it is an inductive
argument. But what if the person putting forth the argument intends or
believes neither of those things?
Philosophy instructors routinely share arguments with their students
without any firm beliefs regarding whether they definitely establish their
conclusions or whether they instead merely make their conclusions
probable. Likewise, they may not have any intentions with respect to the
arguments in question other than merely the intention to share them with
their students. For example, if an argument is put forth merely as
an illustration, or rhetorically to show how someone might argue for an
interesting thesis, with the person sharing the argument not embracing
any intentions or beliefs about what it does show, then on the psychological
approach, the argument is neither a deductive nor an inductive argument.
This runs counter to the view that every argument must be one or the other.
Nor can it be said that such an argument must be deductive or inductive for
someone else, due to the fact that there is no guarantee that anyone has
any beliefs or intentions regarding the argument. In this case, then, if the
set of sentences in question still qualifies as an argument, what sort of
argument is it? It would seem to exist in a kind of logical limbo or no man’s
land. It would be neither deductive nor inductive. Furthermore, there is no
reason to suppose that it is some other type, unless it isn’t really
an argument at all, since no one intends or believes anything about how
well it establishes its conclusion. In that case, one is faced with the peculiar
situation in which someone believes that a set of sentences is an argument,
and yet it cannot be an argument because, according to the psychological
view, no one has any intentions for the argument to establish its conclusion,
nor any beliefs about how well it does so. However, it could still become a
deductive or inductive argument should someone come to embrace it with
greater, or with lesser, conviction, respectively. With this view, arguments
could continually flicker into and out of existence.
These considerations do not show that a purely psychological criterion for
distinguishing deductive and inductive arguments must be wrong, as that
would require adopting some other presumably more correct standard for
making the deductive-inductive argument distinction, which would then beg
the question against any psychological approach. Logically speaking,
nothing prevents one from accepting all the foregoing consequences, no
matter how strange and inelegant they may be. However, there are other
troubling consequences of adopting a psychological approach to consider.
Suppose that it is said that an argument is deductive if the person advancing
it believes that it definitely establishes its conclusion. According to this
account, if the person advancing an argument believes that it definitely
establishes its conclusion, then it is definitively deductive. If, however,
everyone else who considers the argument thinks that it makes its
conclusion merely probable at best, then the person advancing the
argument is completely right and everyone else is necessarily wrong.
For example, consider the following argument: “It has rained nearly every
day so far this month. So, it will for sure rain tomorrow as well.” If the
person advancing this argument believes that the premise definitely
establishes its conclusion, then according to such a psychological view, it is
necessarily a deductive argument, despite the fact that it would appear to
most others to at best make its conclusion merely probable. Or, to take an
even more striking example, consider Dr. Samuel Johnson’s famous
attempted refutation of Bishop George Berkeley‘s immaterialism (roughly,
the view that there are no material things, but only ideas and minds) by
forcefully kicking a stone and proclaiming “I refute it thus!” If Dr. Johnson
sincerely believed that by his action he had logically refuted Berkeley’s
immaterialism, then his stone-kicking declaration would be a deductive
argument.
Likewise, some arguments that look like an example of a deductive
argument will have to be re-classified on this view as inductive arguments if
the authors of such arguments believe that the premises provide
merely good reasons to accept the conclusions as true. For example,
someone might give the following argument:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

This is the classic example of a deductive argument included in many logic

texts. However, if someone advancing this argument believes that the
conclusion is merely probable given the premises, then it would, according
to this psychological proposal, necessarily be an inductive argument, and
not just merely be believed to be so, given that it meets a sufficient
condition for being inductive.
A variation on this psychological approach focuses not on intentions and
beliefs, but rather on doubts. According to this alternative view, a deductive
argument is one such that, if one accepts the truth of the premises,
one cannot doubt the truth of the conclusion. By contrast, an inductive
argument is one such that, if one accepts the truth of the premises,
one can doubt the truth of the conclusion. This view is sometimes expressed
by saying that deductive arguments establish their conclusions “beyond a
reasonable doubt” (Teays 1996). Deductive arguments, in this view, may be
said to be psychologically compelling in a way that inductive arguments are
not. Good deductive arguments compel assent, but even quite good
inductive arguments do not.
However, a moment’s reflection demonstrates that this approach entails
many of the same awkward consequences as do the other psychological
criteria previously discussed. What people are capable of doubting is as
variable as what they might intend or believe, making this doubt-centered
view subject to the same sorts of agent-relative implications facing any
intention-or-belief approach.
One might try to circumvent these difficulties by saying that a deductive
argument should be understood as one that establishes its conclusion
beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, given the truth of the premises,
one should not doubt the truth of the conclusion. Likewise, one might say
that an inductive argument is one such that, given the truth of the premises,
one should be permitted to doubt the truth of the conclusion. However, this
tactic would be to change the subject from the question of what
categorically distinguishes deductive and inductive arguments to that of the
grounds for deciding whether an argument is a good one – a worthwhile
question to ask, to be sure, but a different question than the one being
considered here.
Again, in the absence of some independently established distinction
between deductive and inductive arguments, these consequences alone
cannot refute any psychological account. Collectively, however, they raise
questions about whether this way of distinguishing deductive and inductive
arguments should be accepted, given that such consequences are hard to
reconcile with other common beliefs about arguments, say, about how
individuals can be mistaken about what sort of argument they are
advancing. Luckily, there are other approaches. However, upon closer
analysis these other approaches fare no better than the various
psychological approaches thus far considered.
3. Behavioral Approaches
Psychological approaches are, broadly speaking, cognitive. They concern
individuals’ mental states, specifically their intentions, beliefs, and/or
doubts. Given the necessarily private character of mental states (assuming
that brain scans, so far at least, provide only indirect evidence of
individuals’ mental states), it may be impossible to know what an
individual’s intentions or beliefs really are, or what they are or are not
capable of doubting. Hence, it may be impossible given any one
psychological approach to know whether any given argument one is
considering is a deductive or an inductive one. That and other consequences
of that approach seem less than ideal. Can such consequences be avoided?
The problem of knowing others’ minds is not new. A movement in
psychology that flourished in the mid-20th century, some of whose tenets are
still evident within 21st century psychological science, was intended to
circumvent problems associated with the essentially private nature of
mental states in order to put psychology on a properly scientific footing.
According to Behaviorism, one can set aside speculations about individuals’
inaccessible mental states to focus instead on individuals’ publicly
observable behaviors. According to certain behaviorists, any purported
psychological state can be re-described as a set of behaviors. For example,
a belief such as “It will rain today” might be cashed out along the lines of an
individual’s behavior of putting on wet-weather gear or carrying an
umbrella, behaviors that are empirically accessible insofar as they are
available for objective observation. In this way, it was hoped, one can
bypass unknowable mental states entirely.
Setting aside the question of whether Behaviorism is viable as
a general approach to the mind, a focus on behavior rather than on
subjective psychological states in order to distinguish deductive and
inductive arguments promises to circumvent the epistemic problems facing
a cognitive approach. According to one such proposal, a deductive
argument is one whose premises are claimed to support the conclusion such
that it would be impossible for the premises to be true and for the
conclusion to be false. An inductive argument is one whose premises
are claimed to provide only some less-than-conclusive grounds for accepting
the conclusion (Copi 1978; Hurley and Watson 2018). A variation on this
approach says that deductive arguments are ones in which the conclusion
is presented as following from the premises with necessity, whereas
inductive arguments are ones in which the conclusion is presented as
following from the premises only with some probability (Engel 1994). Notice
that, unlike intending or believing, “claiming” and “presenting” are
expressible as observable behaviors.
This behavioral approach thus promises to circumvent the epistemic
problems facing psychological approaches. What someone explicitly claims
an argument shows can usually, or at least often, be determined rather
unproblematically. For example, if someone declares “The following
argument is a deductive argument, that is, an argument whose premises
definitely establish its conclusion,” then, according to the behavioral
approach being considered here, it would be a sufficient condition to judge
the argument in question to be a deductive argument. Likewise, if
someone insists “The following argument is an inductive argument, that is,
an argument such that if its premises are true, the conclusion is, at best,
probably true as well,” this would be a sufficient condition to conclude that
such an argument is inductive. Consequently, some of the problems
associated with psychological proposals fall by the wayside. Initially,
therefore, this approach looks promising.
The most obvious problem with this approach is that few arguments come
equipped with a statement explicitly declaring what sort of argument it is
thought to be. As Govier (1987) sardonically notes, “Few arguers are so
considerate as to give us a clear indication as to whether they are claiming
absolute conclusiveness in the technical sense in which logicians
understand it.” This leaves plenty of room for interpretation and speculation
concerning the vast majority of arguments, thereby negating the chief
hoped for advantage of focusing on behaviors rather than on psychological
states.

Alas, other problems loom as well. Having already considered some of the
troubling agent-relative consequences of adopting a purely psychological
account, it will be easy to anticipate that behavioral approaches, while
avoiding some of the psychological approach’s epistemic problems,
nonetheless will inherit many of the latter’s agent-relativistic problems in
virtually identical form.
First, what is ostensibly the very same argument (that is, consisting of the
same sequence of words) in this view may be both a deductive and an
inductive argument when advanced by individuals making
different claims about what the argument purports to show, regardless of
how unreasonable those claims appear to be on other grounds. For
example, the following argument (a paradigmatic instance of the modus
ponens argument form) would be a deductive argument if person
A claims that, or otherwise behaves as if, the premises definitely establish
the conclusion:
If P, then Q.
P.
Therefore, Q.

(The capital letters exhibited in this argument are to be understood as

variables that can be replaced with declarative sentences, statements, or
propositions, namely, items that are true or false. The investigation of
logical forms that involve whole sentences is called Propositional Logic.)
However, by the same token, the foregoing argument equally would be
an inductive argument if person B claims (even insincerely so, since
psychological factors are by definition irrelevant under this view) that its
premises provide only less than conclusive support for its conclusion.
Likewise, the following argument would be an inductive argument if person
A claims that its premise provides less than conclusive support for its
conclusion:
A random sample of voters in Los Angeles County supports a new leash law
for pet turtles; so, the law will probably pass by a very wide margin.

However, it would also be a deductive argument if person B claims that its

premises definitely establish the truth of its conclusion. On a behavioral
approach, then, recall that whether an argument is deductive or inductive is
entirely relative to individuals’ claims about it, or to some other behavior.
Indeed, this need not involve different individuals at all. An argument
would be both a deductive and an inductive argument if the same individual
makes contrary claims about it, say, at different times.
If one finds these consequences irksome, one could opt to individuate
arguments on the basis of claims about them. So, two individuals might
each claim that “Dom Pérignon is a champagne; so, it is made in France.”
But if person A claims that the premise of this argument definitely
establishes its conclusion, whereas person B claims that the premise merely
makes its conclusion probable, there isn’t just one argument about Dom
Pérignon being considered, but two: one deductive, the other inductive,
each one corresponding to one of the two different claims. There is no need
to rehearse the by-now familiar worries concerning these issues, given that
these issues are nearly identical to the various ones discussed with regard
to the aforementioned psychological approaches.
A proponent of any sort of behavioral approach might bite the bullet and
accept all of the foregoing consequences. Since no alternative
unproblematic account of the deduction-induction distinction has been
presented thus far, such consequences cannot show that a behavioral
approach is simply wrong. Likewise, the relativism inherent in this approach
is not by itself an objection. Perhaps the distinction between deductive and
inductive arguments is relative to the claims made about them. However,
this approach is incompatible with the common belief that an argument is
either deductive or inductive, but never both. This latter belief would have
to be jettisoned if a behavioral view were to be adopted.
4. Arguments that “Purport”
Both the psychological and behavioral approaches take some aspect of
an agent (various mental states or behaviors, respectively) to be the
decisive factor distinguishing deductive from inductive arguments. An
alternative to these approaches, on the other hand, would be to take some
feature of the arguments themselves to be the crucial consideration instead.
One such proposal of this type states that if an argument purports to
definitely establish its conclusion, it is a deductive argument, whereas if an
argument purports only to provide good reasons in support of its conclusion,
it is an inductive argument (Black 1967). Another way to express this view
involves saying that an argument that aims at being logically valid is
deductive, whereas an argument that aims merely at making its conclusion
probable is an inductive argument (White 1989; Perry and Bratman 1999;
Harrell 2016). The primary attraction of these “purporting” or “aiming”
approaches is that they promise to sidestep the thorny problems with the
psychological and behavioral approaches detailed above by focusing on a
feature of arguments themselves rather than on the persons advancing
them. However, they generate some puzzles of their own that are worth
considering.
The puzzles at issue all concern the notion of an argument “purporting” (or
“aiming”) to do something. One might argue that “purporting” is something
that only intentional agents can do, either directly or indirectly. Skyrms
(1975) makes this criticism with regard to arguments that are said
to intend a conclusion with a certain degree of support. Someone, being the
intentional agent they are, may purport to be telling the truth, or rather
may purport to have more formal authority than they really possess, just to
give a couple examples. The products of such intentional agents (sentences,
behaviors, and the like) may be said to purport to do something, but they
still in turn depend on what some intentional agent purports. Consequently,
then, this “purporting” approach may collapse into a psychological or
behavioral approach.
Suppose, however, that one takes arguments themselves to be the sorts of
things that can purport to support their conclusions either conclusively or
with strong probability. How does one distinguish the former type of
argument from the latter, especially in cases in which it is not clear what
the argument itself purports to show? Recall the example used previously:
“Dom Pérignon is a champagne; so, it is made in France.” How strongly
does this argument purport to support its conclusion? As already seen, this
argument could be interpreted as purporting to show that the conclusion is
logically entailed by the premise, since, by definition, “champagne” is a type
of sparkling wine produced only in France. On the other hand, the argument
could also be interpreted as purporting to show only that Dom Pérignon
is probably made in France, since so much wine is produced in France. How
does one know what an argument really purports?
One might attempt to answer this question by inferring that the argument’s
purport is conveyed by certain indicator words. Words like “necessarily”
may purport that the conclusion logically follows from the premises,
whereas words like “probably” may purport that the conclusion is merely
made probable by the premises. However, consider the following argument:
“The economy will probably improve this year; so, necessarily, the economy
will improve this year.” The word “probably” could be taken to indicate that
this purports to be an inductive argument. The word “necessarily” could be
taken to signal that this argument purports to be a deductive argument. So,
which is it? One cannot strictly tell from these indicator words alone.
Granted, this is indeed a very strange argument, but that is the point. What
does the argument in question really purport, then? Certainly, despite
issues of the argument’s validity or soundness, highlighting indicator words
does not make it clear what it precisely purports. So, highlighting indicator
words may not always be a helpful strategy, but to make matters more
complicated, specifying that an argument purports to show something
already from the beginning introduces an element of interpretation that is
at odds with what was supposed to be the main selling point of this
approach in the first place – that distinguishing deductive and inductive
arguments depends solely on objective features of arguments themselves,
rather than on agents’ intentions or interpretations.
5. Evidential Completeness
Another proposal for distinguishing deductive from inductive arguments
with reference to features of arguments themselves focuses on evidential
completeness. One might be told, for example, that an inductive argument
is one that can be affected by acquiring new premises (evidence), but a
deductive argument cannot be.” Or, one might be told that whereas the
premises in a deductive argument “stand alone” to sufficiently support its
conclusion, all inductive arguments have “missing pieces of evidence”
(Teays 1996). This evidential completeness approach is distinct from the
psychological approaches considered above, given that an argument could
be affected (that is, it could be strengthened or weakened) by acquiring new
premises regardless of anyone’s intentions or beliefs about the argument
under consideration. It is also distinct from the behavioral views discussed
above as well, given that an argument could be affected by acquiring new
premises without anyone claiming or presenting anything about it. Finally, it
is distinct from the “purporting” view, too, since whether an
argument can be affected by acquiring additional premises has no evident
connection with what an argument purports to show.
How well does such an evidential completeness approach work to
categorically distinguish deductive and inductive arguments? Once again,
examination of an example may help to shed light on some of the
implications of this approach. Consider the following argument:

All men are mortal.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

On the evidential completeness approach, this cannot be a deductive

argument because it can be affected by adding a new premise, namely
“Socrates is a man.” The addition of this premise makes the argument valid,
a characteristic of which only deductive arguments can boast. On the other
hand, were one to acquire the premise “Socrates is a god,” this also would
greatly affect the argument, specifically by weakening it. At least in this
case, adding a premise makes a difference. Without the inclusion of the
“Socrates is a man” premise, it would be considered an inductive argument.
With the “Socrates is a man” premise, the argument is deductive. As such,
then, the evidential completeness approach looks promising.
However, it is worth noticing that to say that a deductive argument is one
that cannot be affected (that is, it cannot be strengthened or weakened) by
acquiring additional evidence or premises, whereas an inductive argument
is one that can be affected by additional evidence or premises, is to
already begin with an evaluation of the argument in question, only then to
proceed to categorize it as deductive or inductive. “Strengthening” and
“weakening” are evaluative assessments. This is to say that, with the
evidential completeness approach being considered here, the
categorization follows rather than precedes argument analysis and
evaluation. This is precisely the opposite of the traditional claim that
categorizing an argument as deductive or inductive must precede its
analysis and evaluation. If categorization follows rather than precedes
evaluation, one might wonder what actual work the categorization is doing.
Be that as it may, perhaps in addition to such concerns, there is something
to be said with regard to the idea that deductive and inductive arguments
may differ in the way that their premises relate to their conclusions. That is
an idea that deserves to be examined more closely.
6. Logical Necessity vs. Probability
Govier (1987) observes that “Most logic texts state that deductive
arguments are those that ‘involve the claim’ that the truth of the premises
renders the falsity of the conclusion impossible, whereas inductive
arguments ‘involve’ the lesser claim that the truth of the premises renders
the falsity of the conclusion unlikely, or improbable.” Setting aside the
“involve the claim” clause (which Govier rightly puts in scare quotes), what
is significant about this observation is how deductive and inductive
arguments are said to differ in the way in which their premises are related
to their conclusions.

Anyone acquainted with introductory logic texts will find quite familiar
many of the following characterizations, one of them being the idea of
“necessity.” For example, McInerny (2012) states that “a deductive
argument is one whose conclusion always follows necessarily from the
premises.” An inductive argument, by contrast, is one whose conclusion is
merely made probable by the premises. Stated differently, “A deductive
argument is one that would be justified by claiming that if the premises are
true, they necessarily establish the truth of the conclusion” (Churchill
1987). Similarly, “deductive arguments … are arguments whose premises, if
true, guarantee the truth of the conclusion” (Bowell and Kemp 2015). Or,
one may be informed that in a valid deductive argument, anyone who
accepts the premises is logically bound to accept the conclusion, whereas
inductive arguments are never such that one is logically bound to accept the
conclusion, even if one entirely accepts the premises (Solomon 1993).
Furthermore, one might be told that a valid deductive argument is one in
which it is impossible for the conclusion to be false given its true premises,
whereas that is possible for an inductive argument.
Neidorf (1967) says that in a valid deductive argument, the
conclusion certainly follows from the premises, whereas in an inductive
argument, it probably does. Likewise, Salmon (1963) explains that in a
deductive argument, if all the premises are true, the conclusion must be
true, whereas in an inductive argument, if all the premises are true, the
conclusion is only probably true. In a later edition of the same work, he says
that “We may summarize by saying that the inductive argument expands
upon the content of the premises by sacrificing necessity, whereas the
deductive argument achieves necessity by sacrificing any expansion of
content” (Salmon 1984).
Another popular approach along the same lines is to say that “the
conclusion of a deductively valid argument is already ‘contained’ in the
premises,” whereas inductive arguments have conclusions that “go beyond
what is contained in their premises” (Hausman, Boardman, and Howard
2021). Likewise, one might be informed that “In a deductive argument, the
… conclusion makes explicit a bit of information already implicit in the
premises … Deductive inference involves the rearranging of information.”
By contrast, “The conclusion of an inductive argument ‘goes beyond’ the
premises” (Churchill 1986). A similar idea is expressed by saying that
whereas deductive arguments are “demonstrative,” inductive arguments
“outrun” their premises (Rescher 1976). The image one is left with in such
presentations is that in deductive arguments, the conclusion is “hidden in”
the premises, waiting there to be “squeezed” out of them, whereas the
conclusion of an inductive argument has to be supplied from
some other source. In other words, deductive arguments, in this view,
are explicative, whereas inductive arguments are ampliative. These are all
interesting suggestions, but their import may not yet be clear. Such import
must now be made explicit.
7. The Question of Validity
Readers may have noticed in the foregoing discussion of such
“necessitarian” characterizations of deductive and inductive arguments that
whereas some authors identify deductive arguments as those whose
premises necessitate their conclusions, others are careful to limit that
characterization to valid deductive arguments. After all, it is only in valid
deductive arguments that the conclusion follows with logical necessity from
the premises. A different way to put it is that only in valid deductive
arguments is the truth of the conclusion guaranteed by the truth of the
premises; or, to use yet another characterization, only in valid deductive
arguments do those who accept the premises find themselves logically
bound to accept the conclusion. One could say that it is impossible for the
conclusion to be false given that the premises are true, or that the
conclusion is already contained in the premises (that is, the premises are
necessarily truth-preserving). Thus, strictly speaking, these various
necessitarian proposals apply only to a distinction between valid deductive
arguments and inductive arguments.
Some authors appear to embrace such a conclusion. McIntyre (2019) writes
the following:

Deductive arguments are and always will be valid because the truth of the
premises is sufficient to guarantee the truth of the conclusion; if the
premises are true, the conclusion will be also. This is to say that the truth of
the conclusion cannot contain any information that is not already contained
in the premises.

By contrast, he mentions that “With inductive arguments, the conclusion

contains information that goes beyond what is contained in the premises.”
Such a stance might well be thought to be no problem at all. After all, if an
argument is valid, it is necessarily deductive; if it isn’t valid, then it is
necessarily inductive. The notion of validity, therefore, appears to neatly
sort arguments into either of the two categorically different argument types
– deductive or inductive. Validity, then, may be the answer to the problems
thus far mentioned.

There is, however, a cost to this tidy solution. Many philosophers want to
say not only that all valid arguments are deductive, but also that not all
deductive arguments are valid, and that whether a deductive argument is
valid or invalid depends on its logical form. In other words, they want to
leave open the possibility of there being invalid deductive arguments. The
psychological approaches already considered do leave open this possibility,
since they distinguish deductive and inductive arguments in relation to an
arguer’s intentions and beliefs, rather than in relation to features of
arguments themselves. Notice, however, that on the necessitarian proposals
now being considered, there can be no invalid deductive arguments.
“Deduction,” in this account, turns out to be a success term. There
are no bad deductive arguments, at least so far as logical form is concerned
(soundness being an entirely different matter). Consequently, if one adopts
one of these necessitarian accounts, claims like the following must be
judged to be simply incoherent: “A bad, or invalid, deductive argument is
one whose form or structure is such that instances of it do, on occasion,
proceed from true premises to a false conclusion” (Bergmann, Moor, and
Nelson 1998). If deductive arguments are identical with valid arguments,
then an “invalid deductive argument” is simply impossible: there cannot be
any such type of argument. Salmon (1984) makes this point explicit, and
even embraces it. Remarkably, he also extends automatic success to
all bona fide inductive arguments, telling readers that “strictly speaking,
there are no incorrect deductive or inductive arguments; there are valid
deductions, correct inductions, and assorted fallacious arguments.”
Essentially, therefore, one has a taxonomy of good and bad arguments.
Pointing out these consequences does not show that the necessitarian
approach is wrong, however. One might simply accept that all deductive
arguments are valid, and that all inductive arguments are strong, because
“to be valid” and “to be strong” are just what it means to be a deductive or
an inductive argument, respectively. One must then classify bad arguments
as neither deductive nor inductive. An even more radical alternative would
be to deny that bad “arguments” are arguments at all.
Still, to see why one might find these consequences problematic, consider
the following argument:
If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

This argument form is known as “affirming the consequent.” It is identified

in introductory logic texts as a logical fallacy. In colloquial terms, someone
may refer to a widely-accepted but false belief as a “fallacy.” In logic,
however, a fallacy is not a mistaken belief. Rather, it is a mistaken form
of inference. Arguments can fail as such in at least two distinct ways: their
premises can be false (or unclear, incoherent, and so on), and the
connection between the premises and conclusion can be defective. In logic,
a fallacy is a failure of the latter sort. Introductory logic texts usually
classify fallacies as either “formal” or “informal.” An ad hominem (Latin for
“against the person”) attack is a classic informal fallacy. By contrast,
“affirming the consequent,” such as the example above, is classified as
a formal fallacy.
How are these considerations relevant to the deductive-inductive argument
distinction under consideration? On the proposal being considered, the
argument above in which “affirming the consequent” is exhibited cannot be
a deductive argument, indeed not even a bad one, since it is manifestly
invalid, given that all deductive arguments are necessarily valid. Rather,
since the premises do not necessitate the conclusion, it must be an
inductive argument. This is the case unless one follows Salmon (1984) in
saying that it is neither deductive nor inductive but, being an instance of
affirming the consequent, it is simply fallacious.
Perhaps it is easy to accept such a consequence. Necessitarian proposals
are not out of consideration yet, however. Part of the appeal of such
proposals is that they seem to provide philosophers with an understanding
of how premises and conclusions are related to one another in valid
deductive arguments. Is this a useful proposal after all?
Consider the idea that in a valid deductive argument, the conclusion is
already contained in the premises. What might this mean? Certainly, all
the words that appear in the conclusion of a valid argument need not appear
in its premises. Rather, what is supposed to be contained in the premises of
a valid argument is the claim expressed in its conclusion. This is the case
given that in a valid argument the premises logically entail the conclusion.
So, it can certainly be said that the claim expressed in the conclusion of a
valid argument is already contained in the premises of the argument, since
the premises entail the conclusion. Has there thus been any progress made
in understanding validity?
To answer that question, consider the following six arguments, all of which
are logically valid:

P. P. P and not P.
Therefore, P. Therefore, either Q or not Q. Therefore, Q.
P. P. P.
Therefore, P or Q. Therefore, if Q then Q. Therefore, if not P, then Q.
In any of these cases (except the first), is it at all obvious how the
conclusion is contained in the premise? Insofar as the locution “contained
in” is supposed to convey an understanding of validity, such accounts fall
short of such an explicative ambition. This calls into question the aptness of
the “contained in” metaphor for explaining the relationship between
premises and conclusions regarding valid arguments.
8. Formalization and Logical Rules to the
Rescue?
In the previous section, it was assumed that some arguments can be
determined to be logically valid simply in virtue of their abstract form. After
all, the “P”s and “Q”s in the foregoing arguments are just variables or
placeholders. It is the logical form of those arguments that determines
whether they are valid or invalid. Rendering arguments in symbolic form
helps to reveal their logical structure. Might not this insight provide a clue
as to how one might categorically distinguish deductive and inductive
arguments? Perhaps it is an argument’s capacity or incapacity for being
rendered in symbolic form that distinguishes an argument as deductive or
inductive, respectively.
To assess this idea, consider the following argument:

If today is Tuesday, we’ll be having tacos for lunch.

Today is Tuesday.
So, we’ll be having tacos for lunch.

This argument is an instance of the valid argument form modus ponens,

which can be expressed symbolically as:
P → Q.

∴ Q.
P.

Any argument having this formal structure is a valid deductive argument

and automatically can be seen as such. Significantly, according to the
proposal that deductive but not inductive arguments can be rendered in
symbolic form, a deductive argument need not instantiate a valid argument
form. Recall the fallacious argument form known as “affirming the
consequent”:
If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

It, too, can be rendered in purely symbolic notation:

P → Q.

∴ P.
Q.

Consequently, this approach would permit one to say that deductive

arguments may be valid or invalid, just as some philosophers would wish. It
might be thought, on the other hand, that inductive arguments do not lend
themselves to this sort of formalization. They are just too polymorphic to be
represented in purely formal notation.
Note, however, that the success of this proposal depends on all inductive
arguments being incapable of being represented formally. Unfortunately for
this proposal, however, all arguments, both deductive and inductive, are
capable of being rendered in formal notation. For example, consider the
following argument:
We usually have tacos for lunch on Tuesdays.
Today is Tuesday.
So, we’re probably having tacos for lunch.

In other words, given that today is Tuesday, there is a better than even
chance that tacos will be had for lunch. This might be rendered formally as:

P(A/B) > 0.5

It must be emphasized that the point here is not that this is the only or even
the best way to render the argument in question in symbolic form. Rather,
the point is that inductive arguments, no less than deductive
arguments, can be rendered symbolically, or, at the very least, the burden
of proof rests on deniers of this claim. But, if so, then it seems that the
capacity for symbolic formalization cannot categorically distinguish
deductive from inductive arguments.
Another approach would be to say that whereas deductive arguments
involve reasoning from one statement to another by means of logical rules,
inductive arguments defy such rigid characterization (Solomon 1993). In
this view, identifying a logical rule governing an argument would be
sufficient to show that the argument is deductive. Failure to identify such a
rule governing an argument, however, would not be sufficient to
demonstrate that the argument is not deductive, since logical rules may
nonetheless be operative but remain unrecognized.
The “reasoning” clause in this proposal is also worth reflecting
upon. Reasoning is something that some rational agents do on some
occasions. Strictly speaking, arguments, consisting of sentences lacking
cognition, do not reason (recall that earlier a similar point was considered
regarding the idea of arguments purporting something). Consequently, the
“reasoning” clause is ambiguous, since it may mean either that: (a)
there is a logical rule that governs (that is, justifies, warrants, or the like)
the inference from the premise to the conclusion; or (b) some cognitional
agent either explicitly or implicitly uses a logical rule to reason from one
statement (or a set of statements) to another.
If the former, more generous interpretation is assumed, it is easy to see how
this suggestion might work with respect to deductive arguments. Consider
the following argument:

If today is Tuesday, then the taco truck is here.

The taco truck is not here.
Therefore, today is not Tuesday.

This argument instantiates the logical rule modus tollens:

If P, then Q. P→Q
 Not Q. ~Q
Therefore, not P. ∴~P
Perhaps all deductive arguments explicitly or implicitly rely upon logical
rules. However, for this proposal to categorically distinguish deductive from
inductive arguments, it must be the case both that all deductive arguments
embody logical rules, and that no inductive arguments do.
Is this true? It is not entirely clear. A good case can be made that
all valid deductive arguments embody logical rules (such as modus
ponens or modus tollens). However, if one wants to include
some invalid arguments within the set of all deductive arguments, then it is
hard to see what logical rules could underwrite invalid argument types such
as affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent. It would seem
bizarre to say that in inferring “P” from “If P, then Q” and “Q” that one
relied upon the logical rule “affirming the consequent.” That is not a
logical rule. It is a classic logical fallacy.
Likewise, consider the following argument that many would consider to be
an inductive argument:

Nearly all individuals polled in a random sample of registered voters

contacted one week before the upcoming election indicated that they would
vote to re-elect Senator Blowhard. Therefore, Senator Blowhard will be re-
elected.

There may be any number of rules implicit in the foregoing inference. For
example, the rule implicit in this argument might be something like this:

Random sampling of a relevant population’s voting preferences one week

before an election provides good grounds for predicting that election’s
results.

This is no doubt some sort of rule, even if it does not explicitly follow the
more clear-cut logical rules thus far mentioned. Is the above the right sort of
rule, however? Perhaps deductive arguments are those that involve
reasoning from one statement to another by means of deductive rules. One
could then stipulate what those deductive logical rules are, such that they
exclude rules like the one implicit in the ostensibly inductive argument
above. This would resolve the problem of distinguishing between deductive
and inductive arguments, but at the cost of circularity (that is, by
committing a logical fallacy).
If one objected that the inductive rule suggested above is a formal rule, then
a formal version of the rule could be devised. However, if that is right, then
the current proposal stating that deductive arguments, but not inductive
ones, involve reasoning from one statement to another by means of logical
rules is false. Inductive arguments rely, or at least can rely, upon logical
rules as well.
9. Other Even Less Promising Proposals
A perusal of introductory logic texts turns up a hodgepodge of other
proposals for categorically distinguishing deductive and inductive
arguments that, upon closer inspection, seem even less promising than the
proposals surveyed thus far. One example will have to suffice.

Kreeft (2005) says that whereas deductive arguments begin with a

“general” or “universal” premise and move to a less general conclusion,
inductive arguments begin with “particular”, “specific”, or “individual”
premises and move to a more general conclusion.
In light of this proposal, consider again the following argument:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

As mentioned already, this argument is the classic example used in

introductory logic texts to illustrate a deductive argument. It moves from a
general (or universal) premise (exhibited by the phrase “all men”) to a
specific (or particular) conclusion (exhibited by referring to “Socrates”). By
contrast, consider the following argument:
Each spider so far examined has had eight legs.
Therefore, all spiders have eight legs.

This argument moves from specific instances (demarcated by the phrase

“each spider so far examined”) to a general conclusion (as seen by the
phrase “all spiders”). Therefore, on this proposal, this argument would be
inductive.

So far, so good. However, this approach seems much too crude for drawing
a categorical distinction between the deductive and inductive arguments.
Consider the following argument:

All As are Bs.

All Bs are Cs.
Therefore, all As are Cs.

On this account, this would be neither deductive nor inductive, since it

involves only universal statements. Likewise, consider the following as well:
Each spider so far examined has had eight legs.
Therefore, likewise, the next spider examined will have eight legs.
According to Kreeft’s proposal, this would be neither a deductive nor an
inductive argument, since it moves from a number of particulars to yet
another particular. What kind of argument, then, may this be considered as?
Despite the ancient pedigree of Kreeft’s proposal (since he ultimately draws
upon both Platonic and Aristotelian texts), and the fact that one still finds it
in some introductory logic texts, it faces such prima facie plausible
exceptions that it is hard to see how it could be an acceptable, much less
the best, view for categorically distinguishing between deductive and
inductive arguments.
10. An Evaluative Approach
There have been many attempts to distinguish deductive from inductive
arguments. Some approaches focus on the psychological states (such as the
intentions, beliefs, or doubts) of those advancing an argument. Others focus
on the objective behaviors of arguers by focusing on what
individuals claim about or how they present an argument. Still others focus
on features of arguments themselves, such as what an argument purports,
its evidential completeness, its capacity for formalization, or the nature of
the logical bond between its premises and conclusion. All of these proposals
entail problems of one sort or another. The fact that there are so
many radically different views about what distinguishes deductive from
inductive arguments is itself noteworthy, too. This fact might not be evident
from examining the account given in any specific text, but it emerges clearly
when examining a range of different proposals and approaches, as has been
done in this article. The diversity of views on this issue has so far garnered
remarkably little attention. Some authors (such as Moore and Parker 2004)
acknowledge that the best way of distinguishing deductive from inductive
arguments is “controversial.” Yet, there seems to be remarkably little
actual controversy about it. Instead, matters persist in a state of largely
unacknowledged chaos.
Rather than leave matters in this state of confusion, one final approach
must be considered. Instead of proposing yet another account of how
deductive and inductive arguments differ, this proposal seeks to dispense
entirely with the entire categorical approach of the proposals canvassed
above.
Without necessarily acknowledging the difficulties explored above or citing
them as a rationale for taking a fundamentally different approach, some
authors nonetheless decline to define “deductive” and “inductive” (or more
generally “non-deductive”) arguments at all, and instead adopt
an evaluative approach that focuses on deductive and
inductive standards for evaluating arguments (see Skyrms 1975; Bergmann,
Moor, and Nelson 1998). When presented with any argument, one can ask:
“Does the argument prove its conclusion, or does it only render it probable,
or does it do neither?” One can then proceed to evaluate the argument by
first asking whether the argument is valid, that is, whether the truth of the
conclusion is entailed by the truth of the premises. If the answer to this
initial question is affirmative, one can then proceed to determine whether
the argument is sound by assessing the actual truth of the premises. If the
argument is determined to be sound, then its conclusion is ceteris
paribus worth believing. If the argument is determined to be invalid, one can
then proceed to ask whether the truth of the premises would make the
conclusion probable. If it would, one can judge the argument to be strong. If
one then determines or judges that the argument’s premises are probably
true, the argument can be declared cogent. Otherwise, it ought to be
declared not-cogent (or the like). In this latter case, one ought not to believe
the argument’s conclusion on the strength of its premises.
What is noteworthy about this procedure is that at no time was it required
to determine whether any argument is “deductive,” “inductive,” or more
generally “non-deductive.” Such classificatory concepts played no role in
executing the steps in the process of argument evaluation. Yet, the
whole point of examining an argument in first place is nevertheless
achieved with this approach. That is, the effort to determine whether an
argument provides satisfactory grounds for accepting its conclusion is
carried out successfully. In order to discover what one can learn from an
argument, the argument must be treated as charitably as possible. By first
evaluating an argument in terms of validity and soundness, and, if
necessary, then in terms of strength and cogency, one gives each argument
its best shot at establishing its conclusion, either with a very high degree of
certainty or at least with a degree of probability. One will then be in a
better position to determine whether the argument’s conclusion should be
believed on the basis of its premises.
This is of course not meant to minimize the difficulties associated with
evaluating arguments. Evaluating arguments can be quite difficult.
However, insisting that one first determine whether an argument is
“deductive” or “inductive” before proceeding to evaluate it seems to insert a
completely unnecessary step in the process of evaluation that does no
useful work on its own. Moreover, a focus on argument evaluation rather
than on argument classification promises to avoid the various problems
associated with the categorical approaches discussed in this article. There
is no need to speculate about the possibly unknowable intentions, beliefs,
and/or doubts of someone advancing an argument. There is no need to
guess at what an argument purports to show, or to ponder whether it can
be formalized or represented by logical rules in order to determine whether
one ought to believe the argument’s conclusion on the basis of its premises.
In short, one does not need a categorical distinction between deductive and
inductive arguments at all in order to successfully carry out argument
evaluation..
This article is an attempt to practice what it preaches. Although there is
much discussion in this article about deductive and inductive arguments,
and a great deal of argumentation, there was no need to set out a
categorical distinction between deductive and inductive arguments in order
to critically evaluate a range of claims, positions, and arguments about the
purported distinction between each type of argument. Hence, although such
a distinction is central to the way in which argumentation is often
presented, it is unclear what actual work it is doing for argument
evaluation, and thus whether it must be retained. Perhaps it is time to give
the deductive-inductive argument distinction its walking papers.

1. Appeal to Authority: The passage uses the authority of Professor Gemechu, a

respected physician, to support the claim about building quality in Nekemte. This
is a fallacy because the authority’s expertise in medicine does not justify claims
about building quality.
Step 2: Identify the type of fallacy in Passage 2

2. Ad Hominem: The patient attacks the doctor’s credibility by pointing out that the
doctor smokes, implying that the doctor’s advice against smoking is hypocritical
and therefore not credible. This is a personal attack rather than a refutation of the
argument.

Step 3: Identify the type of fallacy in Passage 3

3. False Dilemma: The passage presents a choice between imposing price

controls or allowing merchants to continue making huge profits, suggesting that
these are the only two options. This ignores other possible solutions or
outcomes, creating a false dichotomy.
4. Appeal to Emotion

Solution

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Solution By Steps

Step 1: Identify the Argument Structure

The passage presents an argument where the speaker is appealing to the professor for a grade
of B in logic. The speaker acknowledges their shortcomings (forgetting F’s) but emphasizes the
dire consequences of receiving a failing grade.

Step 2: Recognize the Emotional Appeal

The speaker uses emotional language to evoke sympathy, focusing on the potential grief of their
parents and the impact on their future. This is a classic example of an emotional appeal.

Step 3: Classify the Fallacy

The fallacy committed here is known as “Appeal to Emotion” (or “Pathos”). This fallacy occurs
when an argument relies on emotional appeal rather than logical reasoning to persuade.
 Final Answer

The fallacy committed in the passage is an “Appeal to Emotion.”

Final Answer

1. Appeal to Authority
2. Ad Hominem
3. False Dilemma.
4. Appeal to Emotion
These fallacies are significant as they represent common errors in reasoning that can
undermine the validity of arguments. Understanding these helps in critical thinking and effective
communication.
Categorical Proposition Analysis

1. Proposition: Some artificial hearts are mechanisms that are prone to failure

 • Quantifier: Some
 • Subject Term: Artificial hearts
 • Copula: Are
 • Predicate Term: Mechanisms that are prone to failure

2. Proposition: No persons who live near airports are persons who appreciate the
noise of jets

 • Quantifier: No
 • Subject Term: Persons who live near airports
 • Copula: Are
 • Predicate Term: Persons who appreciate the noise of jets

3. Proposition: All trials in which a coerced confession is ready to the jury are trials in
which a guilty verdict can be reserved

 • Quantifier: All
 • Subject Term: Trials in which a coerced confession is ready to the jury
 • Copula: Are
 • Predicate Term: Trials in which a guilty verdict can be reserved
4. Proposition: Some universities that emphasize research are not institutions that
neglect undergraduate education

 • Quantifier: Some
 • Subject Term: Universities that emphasize research
 • Copula: Are
 • Predicate Term: Institutions that neglect undergraduate education

By identifying the quantifier, subject term, copula, and predicate term in each
categorical proposition, we can clearly analyze the structure of the statements.