Consider the following statement:
He has blood on his hands and a knife, he must have stabbed somebody.
Now if I change the above statement to:
If a man has blood on his hands and a knife, he must have stabbed somebody.
What am I doing? Am I theorizing, or abstracting, or generalizing, or something else?
Thank you in advance.
Both sentences are "jumping to a conclusion" or "jumping to an erroneous conclusion".
I have had blood on my hands while holding a knife. It was because I was clumsy and had cut myself. There are jobs in meat and fish handling where people get blood on their hands while holding a knife.
The sentence that starts "He had ..." might be regarded as theorizing. Given some observations (blood on hands, knife) you form a theory about the cause.
