Jon S, List,

You wrote:

Attributing the same vector to abduction as to a complete inquiry makes
some sense in light of Phyllis Chiasson's suggestion to use the term
"retroduction" for the latter, rather than the former (
http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/chiasson-phyllis-abduction-aspect-retroduction
).


I am *very* familiar with Phyllis' work as I've read most of it, and I
approve of a great deal of it, most especially that relating to pragmatism
and education. In fact, Phyllis is a friend such that, to give one example,
since she was quite ill at the time of the Peirce Centennial Conference at
UMass, Lowell a couple of years ago and unable to attend it, she asked me
to present her invited paper, which I did (it was most excellent, imo, and
very well-received).

I will, however, continue to consider it an error to conflate abduction
with a complete inquiry. So, as you wrote:

JS: I am not sure if any of these observations should carry much weight,
but there they are.  Perhaps we will finally just have to agree to disagree.


I think that's wise.

Best,

Gary R

[image: Gary Richmond]

*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*

On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 11:08 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]
> wrote:

> Gary R., List:
>
> I am probably as big a fan of Mozart's music as there is, but I am
> struggling to understand your assignment of Peirce's inference terminology
> to one of his compositions.  Maybe I just need to ponder it for a bit.  For
> now, I want to focus on what I think is the crux of our disagreement here.
>
> GR:  In such places he offers abduction as the mirror of deduction, both
> inference patterns *commencing at the rule ...*
>
> This is what bothers me, right here--abduction DOES NOT commence at the
> Rule!  Rather, per CP 5.189, it commences with the observation of a
> surprising fact--the Result.  Only then do we start *searching* for a
> Rule that would explain it when combined with the conjecture that what we
> observed is a Case under that Rule.  Peirce's bean example makes this very
> clear--we come upon these white beans on the table, go looking for a bag in
> the room that contains *only* white beans, find one, and guess that these
> beans came from that bag.
>
> Your alternative bean example, on the other hand, does not fit this
> pattern at all.  In fact, it seems much more like induction than abduction
> to me--by taking samples from the bag, you are now *testing* the
> hypothesis that all of the beans in it are white.  What surprising fact did
> you observe that prompted this particular conjecture in the first place?
>
> Admittedly, one reason why I lean toward Result/Rule/Case for abduction is
> because I simply find it more aesthetically satisfying to keep the
> propositions in the same sequence for all three inference forms.  If we
> then present them in the order of a complete inquiry, some interesting
> patterns are evident.
>
> Abduction = Result/Rule/Case
> Deduction =            Rule/Case/Result
> Induction =                      Case/Result/Rule
>
> *                 | Abduction | Deduction | Induction |*
> *Abduction |  Result      |     Rule     |    Case     | *
> *Deduction |   Rule        |    Case     |   Result    | *
> *Induction   |  Case        |   Result    |    Rule      | *
>
> Notice also that each inference form now starts with the proposition that
> has the same categoriality--abduction, Result, 1ns; deduction, Rule, 3ns;
> induction, Case, 2ns.  Attributing the same vector to abduction as to a
> complete inquiry makes some sense in light of Phyllis Chiasson's suggestion
> to use the term "retroduction" for the latter, rather than the former (
> http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/chiasson-phyllis-abduction-aspect-retroduction
> ).
>
> I am not sure if any of these observations should carry much weight, but
> there they are.  Perhaps we will finally just have to agree to disagree.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
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