ABSTRACT
Theoretical reasoning is the process of revising one’s beliefs for a reason. An inference is a conscious personal-level activity rather than a sub-personal, subconscious information processing. It is also a causal process whereby some of our beliefs cause or result in other beliefs. But inference is more than mere causation. The question of what it is exactly that distinguishes theoretical reasoning from mere causal processes constitutes the so-called ‘problem of inference,’ namely, the problem of what an inferring process consists in. Paul Boghossian has located the distinguishing feature of inference in, what he calls, the ‘taking condition’ requirement. It turns out, however, that all attempts at explicating this notion result in failure. In this chapter, having argued against John Broome’s rule-following account of reasoning, it will be claimed that the dispositional account of the structure of epistemic reasons offers a way of understanding the ‘taking condition’ such that it is no longer vulnerable to the objections raised against its standard construals.
