Helmut, list - but, can't an inference be illogical in its format?
For example:
1] All cats are animals/ All dogs are animals: Therefore, all cats
are dogs.
The premises of the above syllogism are valid; but, the reasoning or
conclusion is invalid. [Undistributed middle].
2] If it rains, my car will get wet. My car is wet: Therefore, it
rained.
The premises are valid. But the conclusion is invalid - I left the
sprinkler on.
Your outline of the three methods of reasoning is a different topic
than a discussion on ''inference' or 'conclusions'.
Edwina
On Thu 05/10/17 1:42 PM , "Helmut Raulien" [email protected] sent:
List, Peirce wrote:"When it is said that all inference “assumes
that what seems to be good reasoning is so,” there is an inaccuracy
of expression. For an inference assumes nothing but its premisses."
I don´t agree. I think, that inferences also assume axioms (e.g. a
deduction assumes transitivity). Or laws of probability (induction)
or possibility (abduction). "Ultimate aim" and "esthetics" I think
refer to universality (which is ultimate and beautiful), but the
universality comes from the universal validness of the axioms and
laws, doesn´t it? Best, Helmut 05. Oktober 2017 um 15:55 Uhr
[email protected]
List,
In this part of his argument Peirce is directing our attention to
the phenomena of reasoning, and although he reaffirms that “the
parallelism is perfect” between reasoning and self-controlled
conduct, he focuses here on the differences between the two, which
make reasoning “a special kind of controlled conduct.”
One difference is that “the efficient determination of our nature,
which causes us to reason in each case as we do, has less relation to
resolutions than to logical norms.” This is important because the
behavioral “resolutions” are arrived at by individuals, while the
logical “norms” are more universal, more general. This makes the
“defendant argument” about the nature of logic look even more
absurd than the parallel argument about morality which negates the
distinction between right and wrong.
After establishing this, Peirce goes on to argue against “the idea
that the criticism of the criticism of reasoning involves some new
reasoning,” i.e. that we need some kind of meta-reasoning to
criticize reasoning itself. A reasoning process, says Peirce, can
check its validity by simply reiterating itself, if it was genuine
reasoning in the first place, because of its inherently cyclical
nature, which evolves from the action-perception cycles involved in
all self-control (not only the human variety), and from what Robert
Rosen called “the modelling relation.” (Here I’m going beyond
what Peirce actually says, but as I tried to explain in my book, I
think it is implicit in what Peirce did say that reasoning and
self-control are essentially nonlinear.) And this is why an “exact
logician” like Peirce rejects all claims to certainty.
In 1.611 Peirce, having dealt with critical logic and ethics, turns
to the first of the normative sciences, esthetics, as the only one
which can furnish the other two with an “ultimate aim.” And since
the moralist assures us that “the only satisfactory aim is the
broadest, highest, and most general possible aim,” our task is
“to say what is the state of things which is most admirable in
itself regardless of any ulterior reason.” That’s a tall order.
Gary f.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 4-Oct-17 07:38
Continuing from Lowell Lecture 1.5 (CP 1.608, EP2:251):
609. There is also such a thing as a general logical intention. But
it is not emphasized for the reason that the will does not enter so
violently into reasoning as it does into moral conduct. I have
already mentioned the logical norms, which correspond to moral laws.
In taking up any difficult problem of reasoning we formulate to
ourselves a logical resolution; but here again, because the will is
not at such high tension in reasoning as it often is in
self-controlled conduct, these resolutions are not very prominent
phenomena. Owing to this circumstance, the efficient determination of
our nature, which causes us to reason in each case as we do, has less
relation to resolutions than to logical norms. The act itself is, at
the instant, irresistible in both cases. But immediately after, it is
subjected to self-criticism by comparison with a previous standard
which is always the norm, or rule, in the case of reasoning,
although in the case of outward conduct we are too often content to
compare the act with the resolution. In the case of general conduct,
the lesson of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is frequently not much
taken to heart and little influences future conduct. But in the case
of reasoning an inference which self-criticism disapproves is always
instantly annulled, because there is no difficulty in doing this.
Finally, all the different feelings which, as we noticed, accompanied
the different operations of self-controlled conduct equally accompany
those of reasoning, although they are not quite so vivid.
610. The parallelism is thus perfect. Nor, I repeat, could it fail
to be so, if our description of the phenomena of controlled conduct
was true, since reasoning is only a special kind of controlled
conduct.
The next section, omitted in CP 1, is from EP2:251-2.
Let us now consider the defendant argument. It rests on two
premisses, to wit: first, that it is unthinkable that a conclusion
should be drawn for any other reason than that it will be accompanied
by a feeling of logicality; second, that if all reasoning is
determined by our feeling of logicality, there can be no distinction
of good and bad reasoning.
But both these premisses are false. Even if our reasonings were all
determined by a feeling of logicality, still so long as we were able
to compare them with norms based on the consideration of the relation
of our thoughts to facts, in case the norms were not satisfied, our
feeling of logicality would instantly be reversed. In no way could
the distinction of good and bad reasoning be destroyed short of
destroying the power of comparing it, after it was made, with such
norms. The truth is that the defendants confound the judgment of
satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the norms which is made subsequent
to the act of inference with a feeling accompanying that act.
The first premiss is still more manifestly false. Nothing can be
more monstrous than to say that it is unthinkable that a reasoning
should be based on anything but a feeling of logicality which is a
part of it. How can an act be caused by a feeling which does not
exist until the act exists? Or who ever reasons, “This seems to me
true and therefore it must be true”? Yet even this is not adopting
the reasoning because that very reasoning seems sound. That is a
thing too absurd to be formulated in words. The only thing without
which it is unthinkable that reasoning should take place is a
determination of one’s nature causing it. But the defendants
confound this with that feeling in the act which they also confound
with the judgment of satisfaction of the norm.
Besides this principal fault of the defendant argument, there is
another that I cannot pass over. When it is said that all inference
“assumes that what seems to be good reasoning is so,” there is an
inaccuracy of expression. For an inference assumes nothing but its
premisses. But if we understand this to mean that no reasoning would
be sound unless what seemed to be good reasoning were good reasoning,
I reply that according to my description of the phenomena of
reasoning, the only fact which the soundness of all reasoning and the
truth of all human thought really depends [on] is that a man’s
conjectures are somewhat better than purely random propositions. The
idea that the criticism of the criticism of reasoning involves some
new reasoning overlooks the fact that the criticism is sustained by
the original inference. “Reasoning,” says Hobbes, “is
computation,” and although this is extravagant, yet it is quite
true that the criticism of the criticism of reasoning simply repeats
the process, like adding up a column of figures a second time. It is
conceivable that a blunder should be repeated, but after the column
has been added, say ten times, and always with the same result, the
arithmetician has no longer any discernible doubt to be quieted; and
to add the column an eleventh time would be quite purposeless. In a
strict theoretical sense, it is not certain that twice two are four,
since it is conceivable that a blunder that might occur once has
occurred every time the addition has been performed.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you will agree that the defendant
argument is a thoroughly bad one, and in particular that the question
of what is good reasoning and what bad is not a question of whether
the mind approves it or not, but is a question of fact. A method that
tends to carry us toward the truth more speedily than we could
otherwise progress is good; a method that has a tendency to carry us
away from the truth is utterly bad, whether we naturally approve of
it or not. This great fallacy once overthrown which governs more or
less the German logics,
CP 1.611 begins here (EP2:252).
611. what does right reasoning consist in? It consists in such
reasoning as shall be conducive to our ultimate aim. What, then, is
our ultimate aim? Perhaps it is not necessary that the logician
should answer this question. Perhaps it might be possible to deduce
the correct rules of reasoning from the mere assumption that we have
some ultimate aim. But I cannot see how this could be done. If we
had, for example, no other aim than the pleasure of the moment, we
should fall back into the same absence of any logic that the
fallacious argument would lead to. We should have no ideal of
reasoning, and consequently no norm. It seems to me that the logician
ought to recognize what our ultimate aim is. It would seem to be the
business of the moralist to find this out, and that the logician has
to accept the teaching of ethics in this regard. But the moralist, as
far as I can make it out, merely tells us that we have a power of
self-control, that no narrow or selfish aim can ever prove
satisfactory, that the only satisfactory aim is the broadest,
highest, and most general possible aim; and for any more definite
information, as I conceive the matter, he has to refer us to the
esthetician, whose business it is to say what is the state of things
which is most admirable in itself regardless of any ulterior reason.
http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm [1] }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures
of 1903
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