Jon A., Ben, List: Thanks for the links. As usual with Peirce, what matters is one's *purpose*; retroduction can be (and is) employed to posit both plausible *explanations* for how the world *is* and plausible *designs *for how the world *could *be. In both cases, I also like the suggestion that it serves the subsidiary purpose of "problem reduction"; we take a complex situation and *reduce *it to a simple (or at least simpler) diagram, in order to facilitate subsequent (deductive) analysis.
Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 11:32 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, and I remember years ago when researching for the "Abductive > reasoning" article at Wikipedia, I found papers treating abduction as a way > to infer how one might achieve a pre-designated goal or end, as opposed to > inferring how nature or people did arrive at an observed outcome or > phenomenon. > > On 3/2/2017 8:45 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote: > >> Thread: >> JAS:https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-03/msg00003.html >> JA:https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-03/msg00005.html >> JAS:https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-03/msg00009.html >> >> Jon, >> >> Thanks for the reply. >> >> When it comes to the complementarity between thought and conduct, >> information and control, it is often forgotten — and indeed it was >> only by coincidence or synchronicity that a discussion elsewhere on >> the web brought it back to mind — the same double aspect is already >> evident in Aristotle's original formulation of apagoge or abduction, >> where he gives two cases (1) a problem of description or explanation >> and (2) a problem of construction or invention, as geometers call it. >> >> Here is a place where I discussed this before: >> >> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2016/02/17/abduction-deductio >> n-induction-analogy-inquiry-3/ >> >> Aristotle’s apagoge, variously translated as abduction, reduction, or >> retroduction, is a form of reasoning common to two types of situations. >> It may be (1) the operation by which a phenomenon (a fact to grasp, to >> understand) is factored through an explanatory hypothesis, or (2) the >> operation by which a problem (a fact to make, to accomplish) is factored >> through an intermediate construction. Aristotle gives one example of each >> type in Prior Analytics 2.25. I give some discussion here: >> >> Aristotle’s “Apagogy” : Abductive Reasoning as Problem Reduction >> • http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Functional_Logic_: >> _Inquiry_and_Analogy#1.4._Aristotle.27s_.E2.80.9CApagogy >> .E2.80.9D_:_Abductive_Reasoning_as_Problem_Reduction >> >> Regards, >> >> Jon >> >
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