> On Sep 26, 2016, at 1:09 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes, methodeutical reasoning can itself be abductive, and if one builds a > house of abductive inferences none of which are quite compelling, then it's > guesswork, it could be a house of cards. > > In the end we base all our reasoning on perceptual facts reached by > abduction, insofar as perception is a kind of non-deliberate abduction. These > abductions are occur in actual practice of math (the mathematician physically > sees the diagram, etc.) and various abstract fields, but are (at least > usually) not formally incorporated into mathematical reasoning, nor into the > logical and mathematical reasoning in fields like statistics and experimental > design, although such inductive fields deal with issues of the reliability of > perceptual judgments.
I think what I’m getting at is that these “perceptual facts” aren’t necessarily facts but at a certain point of analysis have a structure pretty similar to intuitions. Indeed many schools of philosophy have often called intuitions perceptual facts or at least treated them as such. (The original phenomenologists in Husserl’s school perhaps fell into that at times although as a practical matter Platonists often make that move - think Godel’s mathematical platonism for instance) I think what I’m getting at is that underneath all of this is the corrective of Peirce’s common sensicalism. That is we inquire and the community over time accepts some abductive conclusions and rejects others. They are heavily tested and yet may be wrong. This is ultimately how Peirce salvages metaphysics unlike the positivists. Yet relative to the NA and perhaps all abductive arguments we have to question what is common sensism. That is, we should be looking more closely at the community of inquirers rather than any one inquirer. Still thinking through all this and rereading some of the old posts. Thanks for bringing this up as I think it really is a blind spot in my Peirce.
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