Thanks, Ben. Your responses are clear.
My views differ somewhat, but here and now is not the place for a discussion as I have other pressing concerns. Cheers Jerry > On May 1, 2016, at 3:30 PM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Jerry C., list, > > Abduction starts from an observation that seems at least a little surprising > or complicative - something that _calls for explanation_. It doesn't have to > be an all-out shock. That implies that, if I understood chemistry, I could > pick out the at least slightly surprising observations that lead to the > abductive inferences that you talk about. But I know way too little about > chemistry to do that. > > >[JC:] Can a deduction conclusion merely select one of many possible > >conclusions without being redundant? > > >What leads you to state that "abductive inference” is intrinsically wild? > > What prevents abduction reasoning from being well-ordered? > > BU: A deduction is redundant in its conclusion in the sense that the > conclusion is already entailed, deductively implied, by the premisses. If the > premisses are complex or numerous enough, one has a lot of choice in what > conclusions to actually draw. One may not have a deductive algorithm for > strategizing one's deductions. Some of the conclusions give a new perspective > on the premisses, and one usually prefers those - those are where the merely > implicit is rendered explicit. Then the deductive conclusion seems anything > but redundant. > > Abductive inference in its "blackboard" forms is intrinsically wild - the > premisses do not deductively imply the conclusion, and the conclusion does > not deductively imply the premisses and is so far from doing so that (unlike > in induction), there's no fair-seeming way to close the gap. On the other > hand, it doesn't always seem wild, to the extent that one has compensated for > the formal wildness with natural simplicity. Then it may seem anything but > wild. > > >[JC:] Do you consider an assertion such as “A sells B to C for D”, where A, > >B, C, and D are nouns, that is, the premise is a polynomial of adicity four, > >to be an atomic sentence, an atom of logic? > > BU: If its form amounts to H(a, b, c, d), a valence-four predicate of four > individual constants, then it's considered an atomic sentence. > > Best, Ben > > On 5/1/2016 3:03 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: >> Ben, List: >> >> While I agree with the first part of this post, these sections raise >> questions. >> Questions interwoven. >> >>> On May 1, 2016, at 12:57 PM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:baud...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> In abduction, the 'result' is the surprising observation in one of the >>> premisses. In deduction, it's the conclusion which, if >>> neither vacuously stating a logical axiom ("p or not p") nor merely >>> restating a premiss or premisses unchanged, brings a new aspect to the >>> premisses, an element of novelty, even of surprise sufficient to lead one >>> to check one's premisses and reasoning. >>> >> Why do you assert that abduction is restricted to “surprising” observations? >> Is this assertion valid for any atomic sentence that is used to form a >> molecular sentence? >> Or, may several atomic sentences serve as premises such that a large number >> of molecular sentences could be formed? >> >>> It's seemed to me that the 'new aspect' of a worthwhile syllogistic >>> deductive conclusion compensates for the deduction's technical redundancy, >>> its conclusion's saying nothing really new to the premisses. This is >>> likewise as plausibility, natural simplicity, compensates for abductive >>> inference's basic wildness. I don't think that one can ignore either the >>> ratiocinative or instinctual aspects in thoughtful abductive inference. >> Can a deduction conclusion merely select one of many possible conclusions >> without being redundant? >> >> What leads you to state that "abductive inference” is intrinsically wild? >> What prevents abduction reasoning from being well-ordered? >> >>> So, the question to me is, is the 'new aspect' brought by such deduction a >>> 'natural,' 'instinctual' kind of novelty, as opposed to logical novelty >>> (the conclusion saying something unentailed by the premisses), *likewise* >>> as abductive plausibility is a natural, instinctual simplicity, as opposed >>> to logical simplicity (a distinction made by Peirce in "A Neglected >>> Argument" the linked paragraph >>> <https://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/terms#simple>https://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/terms#simple >>> <https://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/terms#simple> )? This kind of >>> novelty resists being usefully quantified likewise as natural simplicity >>> resists it. I don't know whether the sense of such novelty is properly >>> called instinctual. Generally abductive inference seems to depend more on >>> half-conscious or instinctual inference than deduction does. But the >>> fruitful tension between abduction's wildness and its targeted natural >>> simplicity is taken as a lot more troubling than it should be, I think, >>> insofar as that tension is like the fruitful tension between such >>> deduction's technical redundancy and its targeted novelty of aspect or >>> perspective. >> >> Do you consider an assertion such as “A sells B to C for D”, where A, B, C, >> and D are nouns, that is, the premise is a polynomial of adicity four, to be >> an atomic sentence, an atom of logic? >> >> Cheers >> >> Jerry >> >>> Best, Ben >>> >> > > > ----------------------------- > 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 > . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to 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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