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:
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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-5In 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 Siv are taken as samples of the collection M;
S′, S″, S‴, and Siv are P:
.·. All M is PHence the first premise amounts to saying that "S′, S″, S‴, and Siv" 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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