Jerry, Although Feyerabend is arguably a pragmatic realist, I think there should be no thinking of him as a Peircean. Nonetheless I think that there is some convergence on the idea that we can't specify in advance which ideas will be successful between Feyerabend and Peirce. I think that rhetorically Feyerabend exaggerates this aspect, but other things he says, for example in his historical treatment of Galileo in Against Method, treat the justification of new ideas in terms that are comprehensible in terms of the old (in this case Aristotelean). His rhetoric tends to undermine the continuity. It was directed at a specific form of cumulative empiricism, the dominant view at the time.
I wrote my PhD dissertation on the problems with empiricism of that kind, and I gave an analysis and proposed solution that is basically Peircean, I think. I am still working on the solution part more than three decades later. The linguistic creativity paper is part of that project. John Sent from my Samsung device -------- Original message -------- From: Jerry Rhee <jerryr...@gmail.com> Date: 2016/03/10 09:40 (GMT+02:00) To: John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> Cc: Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com>, Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Abduction, Deduction, Induction : Analogy, Inquiry Hi John, I agree with your conclusion of the paper (although I did not read the body). I was objecting to this portion of your post: "There are no magic rules for finding the truth (or "anything goes" as Feyerabend would say in his typically provocative manner)." I think although unsound, and with consideration to its relatedness to context and usage, Peirce's abduction can be an extremely helpful prescription for how to progress honestly and earnestly in inquiry. The Feyrabend quote has the effect of diminishing the value of this great tool. Best, Jerry R On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 1:20 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote: I am not at all clear what you are getting at here, Jerry. I thought Jon Awbrey's recent remarks 1 and 2 were spot on. On his reference to 3, creativity, I would follow the approach I give for creativity in language, but restricted to the formation of hypotheses, in * Informal Pragmatics and Linguistic Creativity<http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/Informal%20pragmatics%20and%20Linguistic%20Creativity%20version2.pdf>, South African Journal of Philosophy, 2014 John Collier Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com<mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com>] Sent: Wednesday, 09 March 2016 11:02 AM To: John Collier Cc: Clark Goble; Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Abduction, Deduction, Induction : Analogy, Inquiry Hi all, It seems paradoxical to me that a Peircean doesn't believe in Peirce's method to inferencing truth under uncertainty. There must be a way out of this dilemma...one, two, three...CP 5.189. Best, Jerry R On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 1:59 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote: List, Another point that is often overlooked in discussions of inference to the best explanation, which I agree is not the same as abduction, though I think abduction is more restrictive than just inference to any hypothesis from which the evidence might be inferred, is that the best explanation need not be a good explanation, so we need more than inference to the best explanation to carry out inquiry responsibly. There are no magic rules for finding the truth (or "anything goes" as Feyerabend would say in his typically provocative manner). John Collier Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com<mailto:cl...@lextek.com>] Sent: Friday, 04 March 2016 12:35 AM To: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Abduction, Deduction, Induction : Analogy, Inquiry On Mar 3, 2016, at 3:25 PM, Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net<mailto:jawb...@att.net>> wrote: Let me just say again that abduction is not "inference to the best explanation". That gloss derives from a later attempt to rationalize Peirce's idea and it has led to a whole literature of misconception. Abduction is more like "inference to any explanation" - or maybe adapting Kant's phrase, "conceiving a concept that reduces a manifold to a unity". The most difficult part of its labor is delivering a term, very often new or unnoticed, that can serve as a middle term in grasping the structure of an object domain. I fully agree and many of his quotations make clear it's not inference to the best explanation. However we should admit that in some places he sure seems to get close to that idea. Even if it doesn't appear to be workable. I'd argue that even when he appears to be talking about best explanation he's much more after the fact our guesses are so often quite good. (Although I'd have to go through all the quotes to be sure that's fair to the texts) ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> 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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