Much appreciated Arlo, I haven't read much about Peirce, except in relation to Royce - who thought very highly of him. But I like "abduction" - its what an alien force does to you when you're trying to find north without a compass.
But right there where he postulates a patterning power within nature that has a correspondence in the human brain... that seems so exquisite to a pragmatic idealist. On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Arlo Bensinger <[email protected]> wrote: > [John] > > I would addendumize further: we do not deduce Quality, we induce it it. > > [Arlo] > Would you consider that we "abduce" it? > > From Wikipedia: "Abduction is a method of logical inference introduced by > Charles Sanders Peirce which comes prior to induction and deduction for > which the colloquial name is to have a "hunch". Abductive reasoning starts > when an inquirer considers of a set of seemingly unrelated facts, armed with > an intuition that they are somehow connected. The term abduction is commonly > presumed to mean the same thing as hypothesis; however, an abduction is > actually the process of inference that produces a hypothesis as its end > result" > > Tie to ZMM: > > "The formation of hypotheses is the most mysterious of all the categories > of scientific method. Where they come from, no one knows. A person is > sitting somewhere, minding his own business, and suddenly...flash!...he > understands something he didn't understand before. Until it's tested the > hypothesis isn't truth. For the tests aren't its source. Its source is > somewhere else. Einstein had said: Man tries to make for himself in the > fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the > world. He then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the > world of experience, and thus to overcome it -- .He makes this cosmos and > its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this > way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of > personal experience -- .The supreme task...is to arrive at those universal > elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. > There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on > sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them -- .Intuition? > Sympathy? Strange words for the origin of scientific knowledge." > > Some snippets from Umberto Eco's "The Sign of Three": > > "(Quoting Peirce).. there can be no reasonable doubt that man's mind, > having been developed under the influence of the laws of nature, for that > reason naturally thinks somewhat after nature's pattern' (Peirce). 'It is > evident,' he writes, 'that unless man has some inward light tending to make > his guesses... much more than they would be by mere chance, the human race > would long ago have been extirpated for its utter incapacity in the > struggles for existence... ' (Peirce). In addition to the principle that the > human mind is, as a result of natural evolutionary processes, predisposed to > guessing correctly about the world, Peirce proposes a second conjectural > principle to partially explain the phenomenon of guessing, namely that 'we > often derive from observation strong intimations of truth, without being > able to specify what were the circumstances we had observed which conveyed > those intimations' (Peirce). ... The different elements of a hypothesis are > in our minds before we are conscious of entertaining it, "but it is the idea > of putting together what we had never before dreamed of putting together > which flashes the new suggestion before our contemplation' (Peirce) ... > Abduction.. is an instinct which relies upon unconscious perception of > connections between aspects of the world..." > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
