Hi  Gary R., Ben U., List,

Yes, with respect to " Ben's "quibble" to the effect that "Peirce said that 
every mental action has the form of a valid inference, not that every inference 
is valid as a pattern of inference", the point is well taken. 

We'll see if any of the critics of the Humble or the larger Neglected Argument 
want to take up the question raised at the end of the post. For my part, I 
don't think that Dennett or Dawkins have much to offer by way of a response to 
the question.

Here are two options that are open to a critic: (1) offer an alternate 
hypothesis that can perform the grand totalizing and synthesizing function that 
has traditionally be supplied by a conception of a personal God that, in his 
Ideas and Ideals, embodies and gives life to all of the laws of logic, 
metaphysics and nature. Or, (2) reject the need for such a grant totalizing and 
synthesizing hypotheses. 

One of Peirce's point is that many thoughtful and reflective human beings (such 
as Plato and Emerson) have recognized the need for the Ideas and Ideals 
embodied in this sort of hypothesis--and Peirce recognizes the same need. He is 
asking each of us to reflect on some basic operations of our own feelings, 
imagination and thought, and then ask ourselves--do we recognize a similar 
need? Like Schiller, I think that aim of further cultivating our habits of 
feeling, action that thought does indeed seem to call out for the kinds of 
Ideas and Ideals that will be sufficient to offer us hope as we seek to bring 
the conflicting tendencies in our personal and social lives into better 
harmony. Whether we call that embodied system of Ideas and Ideals "Nature" or 
"God" matters little to me--so long as we grow to appreciate the Beauty, 
Goodness and Truth of its Divine character.

--Jeff

Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Gary Richmond [gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 10:56 AM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking

Ben, Jeff, List,

Ben, I think your 'quibble' is well taken, and I agree with your analysis.

Jeff, I'm hoping that critics of the 'Humble Argument' as well as the N.A. as a 
whole will respond to the good question at the end of your post:

JD: 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?

Best,

Gary R


[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 Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Benjamin Udell 
<baud...@gmail.com<mailto:baud...@gmail.com>> wrote:

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<tel:928%20523-8354>
________________________________________

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 12:24 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking


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