Inference rules

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Inference rules are guidance for deciding what to believe in open assessments.

Scope

How can one know what to believe in open assessments? Believe means that a person thinks that a statement about reality is actually true.

Definition

These rules are based on axioms of open assessment. A key concept is statement, which means a claim about how something is or happens in reality. A collection of statements that are considered to be true by a particular person is called a belief system of that person. When a group of people have a same collection of statements that they consider to be true, it is called a shared belief system. These inference rules are based on the idea of shared belief systems, and the rules attempt to create criteria for developing shared belief systems.

The rules should not need the concept expert (i.e. a person who should be trusted over a non-expert).

Result

1. Anyone can promote a statement about anything (promote = claim that the statement is true).
2. A promoted statement is considered valid unless it is invalidated (i.e., convincingly shown not to be true).
3. There may be uncertainty about whether a statement is true. This can be quantitatively measured with subjective probabilities. However, uncertainty does not mean ambiguity. Statements should be expressed in a way that, given enough information, it would be possible to unambiguously tell whether it is true or not. This is called a clairvoyant test.
4. The validity of a statement is always conditional to a particular group of people. In other words, a statement that one group considers valid may be considered invalid by another group. The groups don't have to agree. (But it is naturally more effective to operate with statements that are widely accepted.)
5. There can be other rules than these inference rules for deciding what to believe. Rules are also statements and they are validated or invalidated just like any statements. For example, logic and mathematics can be used to show that if one statement (e.g. an axiom) is valid, another (a theorem) must also be valid.
6. If two people within a group promote conflicting statements, the a priori belief is that each statement is equally likely to be true.
7. A priori beliefs are updated into a posteriori beliefs based on observations and open criticism that is based on shared rules. In practice, this means the use of scientific method.
8. Statements about moral norms are developed using the morality game.

See also

• Axioms of open assessment
• Morality game

Keywords

Open assessment, deduction, statement, discussion, open participation, inference, scientific method, value judgement.

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