Jeff, Edwina, list,
I've just a few quibbles, nothing major.
Jeff, you wrote:
Every inference is, in one way or another, valid as a pattern of
inference, including those that are instinctive. Those that appear
to be invalid are patterns of inference that are, themselves, valid,
but the appearance of invalidity is really due to the fact that we
have misunderstood what kind of inference it is (e.g., we think it
is inductive, when it is really abductive). Or, the apparent
invalidity is really just a lack of soundness in that something in
the premisses involves an error on our part and it is really false.
[End quote]
Some of that is very close to what Peirce said in his articles in
_Journal of Speculative Philosophy_ in 1868, but with a decisive
difference. Peirce said that every mental action has the form of a valid
inference, not that every inference is valid as a pattern of inference.
In "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," he said:
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.
[CP 5.266, W 2:214,
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/conseq/cn-frame.htm ]
Yes, invalidity of inference arises from mistaking what kind of
inference it is - where "it" refers to the mental action. But saying
that every inference is valid as a pattern of inference sounds
confusingly like saying that there is no invalid inference.
An unsound deduction is unsound by virtue (or should I say 'vice') of a
falsehood in the premisses, an invalidity in the deductive form, or
both. A valid deduction is unsound if it has one or more false
premisses, and is necessarily unsound if there is an inconsistency
(a.k.a. necessary falsehood) in a premiss or among premisses. A
'forward-only' deduction can be valid and unsound yet true in its
conclusion, e.g., Socrates is a cro-magnon, all cro-magnons are mortal,
ergo Socrates is mortal. (A particularly vacuous example, based on a
necessarily false conjunction of premisses, is: /p/&~/p/, ergo
/p/ or ~/p/.) It's difficult to think of a deduction whose seeming
invalidity boils down to the occurrence of something contingently or
necessarily false in its premisses, maybe that difficulty is what Edwina
was getting at in her reply (I haven't had time to catch up with this
thread). Anyway, whether one can explain seeming invalidity as
unsoundness in non-deductive inference modes depends I guess on how one
defines validity and soundness for them.
Best, Ben
On 9/21/2016 5:06 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Hello Jon, List,
The argument you are trying to reconstruct could be fleshed out more
fully in a number of ways. Here are a few suggestions for filling in
some of the details a bit more:
Major premiss: Every inference is, in one way or another, valid as a
pattern of inference, including those that are instinctive. Those that
appear to be invalid are patterns of inference that are, themselves,
valid, but the appearance of invalidity is really due to the fact that
we have misunderstood what kind of inference it is (e.g., we think it
is inductive, when it is really abductive). Or, the apparent
invalidity is really just a lack of soundness in that something in the
premisses involves an error on our part and it is really false. As a
form of inference, every retroductive conjecture that meets certain
conditions (e.g., it responds to a question occasioned by real doubt,
it is really explanatory, it is possible to deduce consequences that
can be put to the test, it is possible to make inductive inferences
that will tend to show the hypotheses is confirmed or disconfirmed by
observations, the observations that will be used to test the
hypothesis are not the same observations that will be used to make the
inductive inference, etc.) is a valid abductive inference--and hence
has a logical character. Such arguments can, in time, be the subject
of further development in arguments that are more fully under our
conscious control. As such, they can be made into logical inferences
that may rise up to higher levels of assurance, including those of
experience as well as form.
Minor premiss: The humble argument for the Reality of God is a
retroductive conjecture endorsed by instinctive reason. What is more,
it has in fact be met with the support of large communities of
inquirers at different times and places in human history and culture.
In fact, it appears that the core inferential patterns in the argument
are prevalent in the thought of virtually all reasonable human beings.
Over time, different communities have developed the instinctive
hypothesis in a number of different ways, but the core ideas seem to
cut across all such communities--including those communities that are
quite spiritual in orientation as well as those that claim to be less
spiritual in orientation. Setting aside the particularities of how the
conceptions have been developed in different human communities, and
focusing on the core ideas that appear to be held in common, we can
see that those core ideas can be developed into hypotheses that can be
affirmed in a responsible and self-controlled manner by those who are
deeply infused by the desire to learn and who have a relatively
refined sense of how to conduct their inquires according to
experimental methods.
Conclusion: The humble argument for the Reality of God is logical in
all three senses--according to the assurance of instinct, experience
and according to the exact requirements of good logical form. We
should remember, however, that this is not a claim that the conclusion
of the argument is true. Rather, the claim is that the conclusion is
plausible. While it may lack something by way of security, it
possesses much by way of uberty. In fact, our experience shows that
this grand hypothesis--which serves a remarkable totalizing and
synthesizing role in the great economy of our ideas--both within the
realm of our long growing commitments of common sense and in our most
cutting edge inquiries in the special sciences--has shown and
continues to show great uberty in the way that it informs the healthy
growth of our aesthetic feelings, our ethical practices and in the
ongoing logical growth of our thought.
So, let us ask: does this hypothesis involving the conception of God
involve some kind of confusion on our part about the real character of
the inference, or does it rest on false premisses? Peirce's essay on
"The Neglected Argument" is a sustained effort to show that neither of
these is the case. As such, it is a reasonable hypothesis. Is the same
true of the alternate hypotheses?
--Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 12:24 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking
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