Jeff D., Gary R., list,
Your quote from "A Neglected Argument..." bears on plausibility, which
Peirce elsewhere in the same essay discusses as natural, instinctual
simplicity; it bears upon assurance by instinct; I don't find him
discussing methodeutical justification (e.g., testability) of abductive
inference in the passage that you quoted. I've had some further thoughts
on the nature of assurance by form, but they would just lead us further
into byways.
You get into some of the bigger question that you raised in earlier
posts, including the idea that Peirce's Humble Argument may be the only
game in town (my words) on the questions that it concerns. I have lots
of half-formed remarks that I could offer on that, and when I try to get
started, I digress. Maybe I should just mention topics that occur to me
but that I'm unsure of how to address:
• Only game in town - is the assurance of the Humble Argument's being
the only game in town to be acheived by instinctual plausibility, by
experience, or by form? Probably by a combination, but would one kind of
assurance be foremost in the overall assurance? For example, suppose
that string theory were proven mathematically to be the only consistent
way to unite general relativity with quantum field theory. It would
still have to have assurance by experience by accordance with all
observations, but it would still lack confirmation of predictions that
distinguish it from general relativity per se and quantum field theory
per se, which predictions, since they are about quantum gravity, would
currently require a particle collider the size of the known universe - a
conceivable practical test, but contingently fantastically impractical
for us. So, if it were to be found, I'd call such an assurance of string
theory (as sole possible mathematico-physical unifier of GR and QFT) an
assurance by form. See what I mean about my digressions? More to the
point, I should just ask, how does one strengthen the assurance that the
Humble Argument is the only game in town?
• Common elements in theological ideals of various religions - how alike
are those ideals, really?
Best, Ben
*On 9/25/2016 12:06 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:*
Hi Ben U., Gary R., List,
Responses inter polated:
*JD:* 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.
[End quote]
*BU:* The claim is rather that the conclusion is
1. plausible (assurance by instinct) **and**
2. verisimilar (in Peirce's sense, likeness of conclusion to premisses,
the assurance by experience when experience has accumulated but is not
yet conclusive), **and**
3. formally valid. Abductive formal validity, if it does not include
plausibility (instinctual assurance), still includes at least critical
abductive formal validity (the abductive inference can be put into the
form of /rule/, /result/, ergo /case/, or into the form of CP 5.189, or
into whatever other form is accounted good for abduction at the critical
level, i.e., the level of critique of arguments.
*JD:* Yes, I agree.
*BU: *In addition, in your paragraph beginning "Major premiss", you
listed a series of _/methodeutical/_ (not critique-of-argument)
justifications for an abductive inference, such as testability (I'll
just discuss testability for simplicity's sake). Indeed Peirce came to
regard methodeutical justifications as needed for completing the
justification (i.e., validation) of an abductive inference, whereas no
particular methodeutical justification was needed for a deduction or an
induction to be valid (Carnegie Application, L75, 1902, New Elements of
Mathematics v. 4, pp. 37–38.
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-carnegie-institution-correspondence-0
)
JD: I am suggesting that the /methodeutical/ requirements for abduction
that pertain to the first rule of reason, the principle of continuity
and the pragmatic maxim do provide something by way of a justification
for the validity of those abductive inferences that satisfy--in some
degree, perhaps--the methological requirements.
BU: But I wonder whether the methodeutical justification can be
considered assurance by (logical) form. Is it _/assurance/_ at all?
That a claim is testable in principle (idioscopically or otherwise)
gives some kind of assurance versus claims that are untestable in
principle or uncertain as to whether they're testable in principle. Yet
such assurance in whatever degree is assurance not per se _/of truth/_
but of pragmatic meaningfulness, and that pragmatic meaningfulness is
not in turn a source per se of assurance of truth, but only of the
methodeutical possibility of reaching some sort of truth. That seems
the case, even though a claim that is pragmatically meaningless (its
object is uninvestigable, incognizable) even in principle amounts to a
false claim that something unreal is real. (Meanwhile a claim's
testability or untestability in merely our foreseeable practical future
lends it little if any assurance that it is true/false or pragmatically
meaningless in principle). The three assurances (instinct, experience,
form) belong to a trichotomy of kinds of sign in at least one of
Peirce's ten-trichotomy systems. I admit that I wouldn't know what to do
with an assurance that something is pragmatically meaningful in that
regard, if it is not a kind of assurance by form.
Quote | Abduction | Commens
<http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-carnegie-institution-correspondence-0>
www.commens.org
Entry in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms | Abduction | Commens:
Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce
*JD: * I think this passage from "The Neglected Argument..." bears on
the question you are raising about the relationship between these
methodeutical matters and the different sorts of assurance--by instinct,
experience and form--for abductive inferences.
Every inquiry whatsoever takes its rise in the observation, in one
or another of the three Universes, of some surprising phenomenon,
some experience which either disappoints an expectation, or breaks
in upon some habit of expectation of the *inquisiturus;* and each
apparent exception to this rule only confirms it. There are obvious
distinctions between the objects of surprise in different cases; but
throughout this slight sketch of inquiry such details will be
unnoticed, especially since any normal man who considers the three
Universes in the light of the hypothesis of it is upon such that the
logic-books descant. The inquiry begins with pondering these
phenomena in all their aspects, in the search of some point of view
whence the wonder shall be resolved. At length a conjecture arises
that furnishes a possible Explanation, by which I mean a syllogism
exhibiting the surprising fact as necessarily consequent upon the
circumstances of its occurrence together with the truth of the
credible conjecture, as premisses. On account of this Explanation,
the inquirer is led to regard his conjecture, or hypothesis, with
favor. As I phrase it, he provisionally holds it to be "Plausible";
this acceptance ranges in different cases -- and reasonably so --
from a mere expression of it in the interrogative mood, as a
question meriting attention and reply, up through all appraisals of
Plausibility, to uncontrollable inclination to believe. The whole
series of mental performances between the notice of the wonderful
phenomenon and the acceptance of the hypothesis, during which the
usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between its teeth
and to have us at its mercy, the search for pertinent circumstances
and the laying hold of them, sometimes without our cognizance, the
scrutiny of them, the dark laboring, the bursting out of the
startling conjecture, the remarking of its smooth fitting to the
anomaly, as it is turned back and forth like a key in a lock, and
the final estimation of its Plausibility, I reckon as composing the
First Stage of Inquiry. Its characteristic formula of reasoning I
term Retroduction, *i.e.* reasoning from consequent to antecedent.
In one respect the designation seems inappropriate; for in most
instances where conjecture mounts the high peaks of Plausibility --
and is *really* most worthy of confidence -- the inquirer is unable
definitely to formulate just what the explained wonder is; or can
only do so in the light of the hypothesis. In short, it is a form of
Argument rather than of Argumentation. CP 6.469
In many cases, we are able formulate a number of competing hypotheses
that might explain some surprising phenomena. In other cases, however,
the hypotheses that are able to satisfy the requirements of valid
abduction are quite limited in number. I suspect that, in the case at
hand, we are presented with something that is akin to what Kant calls a
"need" of reason. In this case, where we seek an explanation that might
be sufficient to bring unity to the three Universes into unity, the
requirements for a plausible explanation are quite demanding--and it
appears that only one key will fit the lock. After all, only one Ideal
can, it would seem, really be highest.
As this point, let me offer a suggestion that draws on some remarks that
Peirce makes about the Idea of the Absolute. As in projective geometry,
where we call the point on the infinitely distant horizon where all
lines of "perspectivity" converge the "Absolute," so too in philosophy,
we need something that will enable us to ground the different standards
we might use in evaluating the validity of the different forms of
argument. In this case, the grounding is an "Absolute" Ideal that might
enable us to see how the different standards for measuring the validity
of arguments might be mapped--one onto another.
--Jeff
*On 9/23/2016 2:32 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:*
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