ABSTRACT

Inference, understood as a form of conscious and active belief-revision, has recently attracted much interest among philosophers of mind. Many writings on the topic depict inference as a kind of process. However, this assumption is, to my knowledge, nowhere explicitly justified or even reflected upon. In this paper, I argue that the assumption is wrong: while processes take time, it is not possible that inferences take time. Both claims are conceptual observations. It is therefore conceptually impossible that the mental act of inferring is a process.

中文翻译：

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推理不是一个过程

摘要

推理，被理解为一种有意识和积极的信念修正形式，最近引起了心灵哲学家的极大兴趣。许多关于该主题的著作将推理描述为一种过程。然而，据我所知，这种假设在任何地方都没有明确的理由，甚至没有得到反映。在本文中，我认为假设是错误的：虽然过程需要时间，但推理不可能需要时间。这两种说法都是概念性的观察。因此，从概念上讲，推理的心理行为是一个过程是不可能的。