Title: Validity for Beginners

Abstract: The topic of this paper is what I call a judgment of validity. In paradigmatic cases of inference, knowledge of the premises together with a judgment of validity yields knowledge of the conclusion. This suggests a method for understanding such a judgment: It is what you get when you subtract knowledge of the premises from a good inference. If one defines a judgment of validity as I just did, what must it be? What, if anything, does a judgment of validity say about the world? And what in ourselves are we giving voice to when we make such a judgment? In attempting to answer these questions, l will argue for a conception of validity that, among other things, explains how an argument's being valid manages to guide reasoning. This provides in miniature a novel and compelling way of addressing the question of how the laws of logic relate to thought.