Jerry, list,
Apropos of your comment on Peirce's idea that all mental action takes
the form of inference:
The latter is stunning from the perspective that inferences require
a conclusion (!) and for me, at least, passing thoughts float by
without apparent motivation and often without a hint of closure,
just a gentle fade.
Back on Sept. 20, 2015, I wrote to peirce-l:
[....] There's a statement in [my blog] it that I've corrected. I
said that, in the pervasive absence of such heuristic merits as
nontriviality, natural simplicity, etc., no mind would bother with
inference. It might be better [to] say more narrowly that no mind
would bother with _/reasoning/_, in the sense of explicit,
consciously weighed inference. I wasn't thinking with Peirce's
exemplary broadness. Inference without those heuristic merits would
amount to remembering (... ∴ /p/, ∴ /p/, ∴ /p/, ∴ ...),
free-associative or at any rate wild supposition, and so on; one
might call them degenerate cases of inference but, in their seasons,
they have their merits, and arguably need to be taken into account
for Peirce's idea that all of a mind's action is a continuum of
inference.
A pretty wild play of the imagination is, it cannot be doubted,
an inevitable and probably even a useful prelude to science proper.
— Peirce, CP 1.235 (1902). Snifter clink to Gary Fuhrman
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/index.php/2015/09/15/wild-science/
[End quote]
My notion there was that remembering amounts to a kind of equipollential
deduction without nontriviality, and that free-associative or wild
supposition amounts to a kind of abductive inference without explanatory
instinctual naturalness or simplicity.
Best, Ben
On 11/8/2015 9:34 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Jerry, list,
On mental action as always having the form of inference (i.e.,
inference as the form of all mental action): Peirce goes even further
and says that all mental action conforms to the formula of _/valid/_
inference.
See "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" (1868), CP5.264-317, also
W2:211-41, in particular CP 5.266-79,
beginning
"In accepting the first proposition",
continuing through
"It is a consequence, then, of the first two principles whose results
we are to trace out, that we must, as far as we can, without any other
supposition than that the mind reasons, reduce all mental action to
the formula of valid reasoning."
and ending with
"In every fallacy, therefore, possible to the mind of man, the
procedure of the mind conforms to the formula of valid inference."
On the sample as index of the whole:
1867 | On a New List of Categories | W 2:58; CP 1.559
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-new-list-categories-5
In an argument, the premises form a representation of the
conclusion, because they indicate the interpretant of the
argument, or representation representing it to represent its
object. The premises may afford a likeness, index, or symbol of
the conclusion. In deductive argument, the conclusion is
represented by the premises as by a general sign under which it is
contained. In hypotheses, something like the conclusion is proved,
that is, the premises form a likeness of the conclusion. [—]
That it is different with induction another example will show.
/S/′, /S/″, /S/‴, and /S^iv / are taken as samples of the
collection /M/;
/S/′, /S/″, /S/‴, and /S^iv / are /P/:
.·. All /M/ is /P/
Hence the first premise amounts to saying that "/S/′, /S/″, /S/‴,
and /S^iv /" is an index of /M/. Hence the premises are an index
of the conclusion.
[End quote]
See also this remark by Peirce in 1903
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-harvard-lectures-pragmatism-lecture-v-deleted-passage-0
Best, Ben
On 11/7/2015 8:20 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
List:
Does anyone have the citations for the two statements with respect to
indices and mental acts as "forms" of inferences? I am curious
about the textual origins in view of the following feelings.
The first suggests a role for the connection between sin-sign and
index as a consequence of the antecedent analysis of the sin-sign.
The latter is stunning from the perspective that inferences require a
conclusion (!) and for me, at least, passing thoughts float by
without apparent motivation and often without a hint of closure, just
a gentle fade.
Cheers
Jerry
On Nov 7, 2015, at 1:53 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
Ben, list,
You wrote:
If the sample is an index, as he later said, of the whole, what
sort of actual index indicates a hypothetical, potential whole?
Yes, that is a good point. He must have changed his views, but I'm
not sure exactly how. I just re-read the paragraph in Kaina
Stoicheia where he introduces depth, breadth, and information, but
there is not much there, and certainly nothing about how they relate
to inference. He clearly still has the basic ideas there so many
decades later, but how to apply them in light of changes to his
views in semiotics?
If all mental action has the form of inference, then they all must
be related to inferences in some way.
Yes, exactly my thought.
Franklin
On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote
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