inference

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.
2. n. The act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence.
3. n. Something inferred.
4. n. Usage Problem A hint or suggestion: The editorial contained an inference of foul play in the awarding of the contract. See Usage Note at infer.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The formation of a belief or opinion, not as directly observed, but as constrained by observations made of other matters or by beliefs already adopted; the system of propositions or judgments connected together by such an act in a syllogism—namely, the premises, or the judgment or judgments which act as causes, and the conclusion, or the judgment which results as an effect; also, the belief so produced. The act of inference consists psychologically in constructing in the imagination a sort of diagram or skeleton image of the essentials of the state of things represented in the premises, in which, by mental manipulation and contemplation, relations that had not been noticed in constructing it are discovered. In this respect inference is analogous to experiment, where, in place of a diagram, a simplified state of things is used, and where the manipulation is real instead of mental. Unconscious inference is the determination of a cognition by previous cognitions without consciousness or voluntary control. The lowest kind of conscious inference is where a proposition is recognized as inferred, but without distinct apprehension of the premises from which it has been inferred. The next lowest is the simple consequence, where a belief is recognized as caused by another belief, according to some rule or psychical force, but where the nature of this rule or leading principle is not recognized, and it is in truth some observed fact embodied in a habit of inference. Such, for example, is the celebrated inference of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum (‘I think, therefore I exist’). Higher forms of inference are the direct syllogism (see syllogism); apagogic inference, or the reductio ad absurdum, which involves the principle of contradiction: dilemmatic inference, which involves the principle of excluded middle; simple inferences turning upon relations; inferences of transposed quantity (see below); and the Fermatian inference (see Fermatian). Scientific inferences are either inductive or hypothetic. See induction, 5, and analogy, 3.
2. n. Reasoning from effect to cause; reasoning from signs; conjecture from premises or criteria; hypothesis.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.
2. n. countable That which is inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.
2. n. That which inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation