Definition of "deductive" [de•duct•ive]

• Of or based on deduction. (adjective)
• Involving or using deduction in reasoning. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Deductive inconsistency so defined determines one kind of incoherence in belief, which I refer to as deductive incoherence."
• "And I don't think Fido or neurons have concepts and hence my view that they are not the sorts of thing that engage in deductive inference."
• "Now the method which was almost exclusively employed until Bacon's time is commonly called the deductive method; that is, some principle or premise was assumed to be true, and reasoning was made from this assumption."