Dear Ben Udell: Please rest assured that I did not take any of your comments as criticism.
Rather, I am very interested in the issues that you have raised, and eager to understand them. I therefore appreciate very much your explanatory emails, both in response to me and to others, as well as of all those others who have contributed to this thread. I find your puzzlement about the "emotion belonging to occasion of (attenuative) deduction" to be fascinating, at least as you describe the problem: It's true, 'impatience' and 'suspense' seem strong words for the emotion belonging to the occasion of (attenuative) deduction. I'm thinking of a feeling of curiosity about the future such that one wishes to shorten by deduction the wait till discovery. You suggest the word 'dissatisfaction'. One could think of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the facts known or hypothesized so far, as if they seemed coy, or insufficient for a worthwhile conclusion, to which one responds by managing to deduce a worthwhile conclusion. Yet "dissatisfaction" as the occasion of deduction seems too vague. Surprise and perplexity could also be taken as kinds of dissatisfaction. If we take seriously Peirce's idea that deduction _ *predicts*_, then the idea of at least some mild feeling of suspense or impatience seems to follow logically enough as belonging to deduction's occasion. If one has abduced a hypothesis about which one cares, and can't think of a deductive, distinctive testable prediction, one is left to feel impatient for time's eventual confirmation or overturning of one's hypothesis in the natural course of events. Note also the nice opposition between surprise, perplexity, etc., and suspense. Well, I guess there's to brood on the question some more. Previously, I had thought that deduction, at least insofar as it was the second stage of abductive reasoning after a hypothesis was found, was the "comfortable"stage of the process, where after the irritation of the "surprising fact C is observed," comes the comfortable hypothesis that "But if A were true, C would be a matter of course." The next step is to apply what one knows of A, again presumably comfortably, in order to trace out the known consequences of A, so that one could then switch to induction to observe whether all the known consequences are found, so that if one of the known consequences is not found, then the hypothesis must be rejected, and then one must go back to one's initial irritation to find another hypothesis. However, I have just read your blog on "Deduction vs, Apliative; also Repletive vs Attenuative" at http://tetrast.blogspot.com/2015/08/idara.html where you define attenuative as *Something* (explicit or entailed) *in the premisses is not* (explicit or entailed) *in the conclusion.* Therefore, I ask: If one assumed that "If A, then C would be a matter of course," and then deduced from A that one should find not only C, but also D and F, then when one checked and found that D or F were not found in the circumstances in which one found C, would then one have an attenuative deduction situation? Or would one only have the falsification of hypothesis A? Ben Novak *Ben Novak <http://bennovak.net>* 5129 Taylor Drive, Ave Maria, FL 34142 Telephones: Magic Jack: (717) 826-5224 *Best to call and leave messages.* Landline: 239-455-4200 *My brother's main phone line.* Mobile (202) 509-2655* I use this only on trips--and in any event messages arrive days late.* Skype: BenNovak2 *"All art is mortal, **not merely the individual artifacts, but the arts themselves.* *One day the last portrait of Rembrandt* *and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — **though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes may remain — **because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message **will have gone." *Oswald Spengler On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > Clark, list, > > I think that the relevance of the classification of research is in the > light shed on the logical supports among fields in the build-up of > knowledge. Physics doesn't decide which math is mathematically right, which > combined mathematical postulates are consistent and nontrivial, and so on, > instead it decides which maths are applicable to, and illuminating in, > physics. How far can one trace such structures of logical dependence and > independence? > > Sometimes physical research leads to mathematical discovery. Conical > refraction was simultaneously a discovery in physics and in mathematics. > But even if it hadn't proved applicable in physics, it still would have > been mathematically valuable. If one thinks that mathematics depends > logically on biology or psychology, one will start asking mathematicians to > study biology or psychology to really get to the bottom of their subject. > While they might find some inspiration and deep examples of math there, it > still seems like a more refined and polite version of sending the > mathematicians out to work in the collective farms. I think that > mathematicians would already be studying a lot more biology or psychology > if they thought that such studies could support their mathematical findings. > > Moreover, one may suppose (as Peirce did) that the most general > classifications will bear out logical structure, and that the layout of the > city of research will come to reflect the collective structure of the > subject matters like constellations above. One likes to see what that > 'total population' of subject matters shapes up to look like in terms of > parameters. I imagine that Peirce liked that. It seems philosophical > enough. Peirce put such classification into 'Science of Review', which he > also called 'Synthetic Philosophy'. At any rate such classification applies > cenoscopic philosophy. If one extends parameters from a number of sample > cases, one may even predict that there ought to be, or come to be, a > certain field of study. > > *** > > It's true, 'impatience' and 'suspense' seem strong words for the emotion > belonging to the occasion of (attenuative) deduction. I'm thinking of a > feeling of curiosity about the future such that one wishes to shorten by > deduction the wait till discovery. You suggest the word 'dissatisfaction'. > One could think of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the facts known or > hypothesized so far, as if they seemed coy, or insufficient for a > worthwhile conclusion, to which one responds by managing to deduce a > worthwhile conclusion. Yet "dissatisfaction" as the occasion of deduction > seems too vague. Surprise and perplexity could also be taken as kinds of > dissatisfaction. If we take seriously Peirce's idea that deduction _ > *predicts*_, then the idea of at least some mild feeling of suspense or > impatience seems to follow logically enough as belonging to deduction's > occasion. If one has abduced a hypothesis about which one cares, and can't > think of a deductive, distinctive testable prediction, one is left to feel > impatient for time's eventual confirmation or overturning of one's > hypothesis in the natural course of events. Note also the nice opposition > between surprise, perplexity, etc., and suspense. Well, I guess there's to > brood on the question some more. > > Best, Ben > > On 10/21/2015 2:28 PM, Clark Goble wrote: > > On Oct 21, 2015, at 11:25 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote: > > The positivists divided sciences into formal (i.e., mathematics and > deductive logic) and factual. I never got clear on where they put > philosophy, I suspect they hoped to make it into a formal science. > > I think they differed among themselves on this, although I’m not an expert > on the Vienna circle. (And especially not the 19th century positivists) It > seemed that the spirit of the mid-20th century was to attempt to reduce > philosophy to other matters. Either becoming clear on our semantics that > would dissolve most problems or to reduce it to a kind of foundationalist > epistemology of judgments with the rest being clear formalism. It was in > most ways a rather bad dead end for philosophy IMO. Fortunately people drug > themselves out of it while (hopefully) taking what was useful from both > critiques. > > I’ll confess that I’ve never quite understood the drive to taxonomy on > these matters. (This is one Peircean drive I’ve never been able to quite > embrace) If for only the reason that any practical analysis seems such a > mix of different taxonomies. I just never quite was clear what the point > was. Certainly keeping clear what one is doing (semantics vs. ontology) and > so forth is important. But one can become clear on the parts one is doing > while acknowledging that the item under analysis is usually a mix. > > Perhaps I’m wrong in this though. > > As to my question, I think I was getting myself into some contortions > about deduction because in some half-conscious way I was still introducing > the idea of conflict. Now, Peirce said that deduction is for prediction. > That by itself is enough to suggest that an emotion of impatience belongs > to the occasion of deduction — an impatience with the vagueness of the > future, or the coyness of the present in telling us it — one doesn't want > to wait for nature to take its course, one wants to find out ahead of time, > on the basis of accumulated data, what is the fate, for example of the > Milky Way. (It turns out to be on a collision course with the Andromeda > galaxy.) > > I think you’re right although I’m not sure impatience gets at the feeling > quite right. I think dissatisfaction is perhaps more apt since impatience > implies a time component that’s not always present. > > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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