Inference rules

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Inference rules are guidance for deciding what to believe in 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 group is called a belief system of that group. 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 are also shades of grey of validity (likely, plausibly, unlikely to be true). This can be quantitatively measured with subjective probabilities.
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 is valid, another must be invalid.
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 based on observations and open criticism that is based on shared rules. In practice, this means the use of scientific method.
8. Personal moral beliefs are considered only as statements about what the moral beliefs of a person are. For example, if a person believes that it is wrong to kill a person, this is not taken as a universal moral norm. (Here, universal means that a norm exists independently of human individuals and their beliefs.) Instead, simply, the statement that this person thinks that it is wrong to kill a person is considered valid. If a similar statement applies to everyone in a group, these statements can be used as practical guidance to deduce what actions the group is willing to accept or not accept. Whether there actually exists universal moral norms about anything is something that open assessment does not attempt to solve.

See also

• Axioms of open assessment

Keywords

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

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