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Full Idea
'Implying' is different from 'inferring', because a person who infers draws the conclusion, but a person who implies leaves it to the audience to draw the conclusion.
Gist of Idea
A person who 'infers' draws the conclusion, but a person who 'implies' leaves it to the audience
Source
Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.279)
Book Ref
Mautner,Thomas: 'Dictionary of Philosophy' [Penguin 1997], p.279
A Reaction
I had always taken it just that the speaker does the implying and the audience does the inferring. Of course a speaker may not know what he or she is implying, but an audience must be aware of what it is inferring.
| 12196 | A valid hypothetical syllogism is 'that which does not begin with a truth and end with a falsehood' [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 14106 | Implication cannot be defined [Russell] |
| 14108 | It would be circular to use 'if' and 'then' to define material implication [Russell] |
| 9520 | The paradoxes of material implication are P |- Q → P, and ¬P |- P → Q [Lemmon] |
| 6879 | 'Material implication' is defined as 'not(p and not-q)', but seems to imply a connection between p and q [Mautner] |
| 6878 | A person who 'infers' draws the conclusion, but a person who 'implies' leaves it to the audience [Mautner] |
| 10689 | A step is a 'material consequence' if we need contents as well as form [Beall/Restall] |