Jon AS, Thanks as always for tracing out the full history of Peirce’s own usage of the two terms. I too have treated them as synonymous in Turning Signs, and I don’t think Gary R was suggesting otherwise — just that the different terms are somewhat different in their suitability for communicating the one idea in different contexts, or communicating it to different audiences.
Gary f From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 15-Jun-20 20:36 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Communicating An Idea Gary F., Gary R., List: GF: This approach seems to be supported by Peirce’s remark that “I perform an abduction when I so much as express in a sentence anything I see,” that “Not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step.” Those comments by Peirce remind me of his "third cotary proposition" from the 1903 Harvard Lectures, which is "that abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them; or in other words our first premisses, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences, from which they differ in being absolutely beyond criticism" (CP 5.181, EP 2:227). However, I honestly think that we could substitute "retroduction" for "abduction" and "retroductive" for "abductive" in all these quotes without changing their meaning at all. GR: So, as I see it, in sum: abduction is a general term for a certain kind of 'guessing' in the arts and (possibly) the sciences, while retroduction specifically and exclusively applies to that familiar kind of scientific thinking which works backwards, from effect to cause, and which, I believe, ought best be thought of as 'hypothesis formation." Frankly, I am not aware of any more warrant in Peirce's writings for drawing this distinction than for the one proposed by Chiasson, which we both find unpersuasive. Are there specific places where he discusses the artistic reasoning process that you associate with "abduction"? If so, I have not found them so far. On the other hand, it turns out that he does use both terms within the same passage at least twice, potentially shedding light on why he employs "abduction" for a while despite having a definite preference for "retroduction." CSP: There are in science three fundamentally different kinds of reasoning, Deduction (called by Aristotle συναγωγή or ἀναγωγή), Induction (Aristotle's and Plato's ἐπαγωγή), and Retroduction (Aristotle's ἀπαγωγή, but misunderstood because of corrupt text, and as misunderstood usually translated abduction). (CP 1.65, c. 1896) CSP: This kind of reasoning is very often called adopting a hypothesis for the sake of its explanation of known facts ... This probable reasoning in the second figure is, I apprehend, what Aristotle meant by ἀπαγωγή. There are strong reasons for believing that in the chapter on the subject in the Prior Analytics, there occurred one of those many obliterations in Aristotle's MS due to its century long exposure to damp in a cellar, which the blundering Apellicon, the first editor, filled up with the wrong word. Let me change but one word of the text, and the meaning of the whole chapter is metamorphosed in such a way that it no longer breaks the continuity of the train of Aristotle's thought, as in our present text it does but so as to bring it into parallelism with another passage, and to cause the two examples, like the generality of Aristotle's examples, to represent reasonings current at his time, instead of being, as our text makes them, the one utterly silly and other nearly as bad. Supposing this view to be correct, ἀπαγωγή should be translated not by the word abduction, as the custom of the translators is, but rather by reduction or retroduction. In these lectures I shall generally call this type of reasoning retroductlon. (NEM 4:183, RLT 140-141, 1898) I find it to be quite clear here, as well as when comparing the many texts where he uses only one word or the other, that Peirce considers the two terms to be synonymous. "Abduction" is the usual and traditional translation of Aristotle's ἀπαγωγή, which likewise also means "kidnapping" in Greek, so Peirce might have felt obliged to maintain it while seeking to capitalize on the widespread interest in pragmatism during the several years after William James first popularized it (and credited him with founding it) in 1898. However, he strongly suspected corruption of the original text and believed that "retroduction" better captures what Aristotle really intended. The excerpts in the online Commens Dictionary support this (ahem) retroduction, suggesting that Peirce mainly uses "hypothesis <http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/hypothesis-%5Bas-a-form-of-reasoning%5D> " until the mid-1890s, then "retroduction <http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/retroduction> " for the rest of that decade, and then "abduction <http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/abduction> " from roughly 1901 to 1906. I suspect that the inclusion of so many texts that he wrote during those six years accounts for the fact that CP has some 149 instances of "abduction(s)/abductive(ly)" but only 58 of "retroduction(s)/retroductive(ly)," while in EP 2 the tally is even more lopsided at roughly 134 to 25. Nevertheless, even within that time period he plainly expresses dissatisfaction with "abduction." CSP: In what then does the soundness of argument consist? In order to answer that question it is necessary to recognize three radically different kinds of arguments which I signalized in 1867 and which had been recognized by the logicians of the eighteenth century, although those logicians quite pardonably failed to recognize the inferential character of one of them. Indeed, I suppose that the three were given by Aristotle in the Prior Analytics, although the unfortunate illegibility of a single word in his manuscript and its replacement by a wrong word by his first editor, the stupid [Apellicon]* has completely altered the sense of the chapter on Abduction. At any rate, even if my conjecture is wrong, and the text must stand as it is, still Aristotle, in that chapter on Abduction, was even in that case evidently groping for that mode of inference which I call by the otherwise quite useless name of Abduction,--a word which is only employed in logic to translate the [ἀπαγωγή] of that chapter. (CP 5.143-144, EP 2:205, 1903) The asterisk is where EP 2 has a reference to note 11 on page 537, which tells the full story of the illegible word by quoting CP 7.250-251 (1901). Peirce eventually seems to stick with "retroduction," from about 1907 until the end of his life, presumably because it better captures the logical notion of reasoning backwards "from consequent to antecedent" (CP 6.469, EP 2:441, 1908). Maybe he also finally decided that, like "pragmaticism," this name would be safe from kidnappers. :-) Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 6:20 AM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary R, I think yours is a very astute and context-sensitive way of communicating the idea abduction/retroduction. To a logician, I guess it would make “abduction” a “looser” or more vague term than “retroduction”. Or we might say that abduction is more preconscious than retroduction. This approach seems to be supported by Peirce’s remark that “I perform an abduction when I so much as express in a sentence anything I see,” that “Not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step.” The context and source of that remark is here <http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/xpt.htm#abdct> in my book (which I’ve just slightly revised to reflect what I’m learning from this conversation). Anyway, I think the core idea is the same regardless of whether we call it abduction or retroduction. Gary f. } Entering is the source, and the source means from beginning to end. [Dogen] { <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ living the transition From: Gary Richmond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: 14-Jun-20 17:41 To: Peirce-L <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Communicating An Idea Jon, Gary F, List, Gary F wrote: My tentative hypothesis is that retroduction is the better name because the retro- prefix suggests a backward or returning movement of thought. This seems to me related to Peirce’s analogy between causality and reasoning: just as we think of cause > effect as a forward motion in time, we think of deductive reasoning as a forward movement from premisses to conclusion. Retroduction, though, is works back from the observed effect to the hypothesized cause. And Jon wrote in response: In Peirce's late writings, he is consistently inconsistent about whether to use "abduction" or "retroduction" when referring to the kind of reasoning that he usually calls "hypothesis" in his early writings. As you [Gary F] note, he goes with "retroduction" in the Cambridge Lectures of 1898 and "A Neglected Argument" in 1908. However, he reverts to "abduction" in the Harvard and Lowell Lectures of 1903, even including it in the title of the final presentation of each series. Personally, I prefer "retroduction," both for the reasons that you give below and because "abduction" is much more familiar to most English-speakers as a synonym for kidnapping. This is an interesting terminological case in which, as Jon wrote, Peirce "is consistently inconsistent about whether to use "abduction" or "retroduction" when referring to the kind of reasoning that he usually calls "hypothesis" in his early writings." But in his "early writings" 'hypothesis' is always used within the context of scientific inquiry. Yet it seems to me that there is also in Peirce the suggestion that 'abduction' can also refer to certain other kinds of 'guesses' including those which artists in various artistic disciplines are always making, especially -- but hardly exclusively -- as they begin a work. Such 'guesses' might include in planning a new work (a novel, or a building, or a sculpture, etc.), say, for a painting: the subject matter being considered, the size of the canvas appropriate to that subject matter, the choice of materials (watercolor or oil; on canvas or wood, etc.), the colors to be employed in order to bring about the intended effect, etc. In any case, that is how I know some folk in the arts and humanities, sometimes these days actually informed by Peirce's use of the term, are thinking about 'abduction' (and, btw, I think 'abduction' is often enough used in this way as not easily to be confused with its more familiar use as "a synonym for kidnapping," as Jon suggested in the quotation above). So my tentative conclusion regarding the terminological question is, I believe, rather similar to Gary F's (with a slight addition). As I think of it, abduction is a term which can be employed both in science or in the arts, etc., to mean 'a kind of 'guess' which might lead to (a) a sort of 'truth' in an artwork or (b) a possible tentative 'explanation' as science inquires into some phenomenon within nature (it will, of course, need to be tested). In science I believe it ought best be referred to, as it ordinarily is, as a hypothesis. On the other hand, retroduction ought, in my opinion, be limited to a more formal act of scientific 'guessing' as it "works back from the observed effect to the hypothesized cause" as Gary F succinctly put it. However, in reading that snippet just now, "hypothesized" sounded to me to be, perhaps, redundant, which is to say, that in Peirce's understanding, I believe, scientific hypothesis formation is retroductive. But on second thought, I think that Gary F is correct: that retroduction (hypothesis formation) leads to actual hypotheses being formed, some of which might eventually be tested. Jon also wrote: As you may know, Phyllis Chiasson takes a different tack, claiming <http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/chiasson-phyllis-abduction-aspect-retroduction> that abduction "refers to a distinct form of logical inference," while retroduction is "the form of a deliberate and overarching logical method which incorporates abduction, deduction, and induction for its full performance." This solution is admittedly clever, but I find it utterly unpersuasive because I am not aware of any text where Peirce uses both terms, as he surely would have if that had been what he intended. Moreover, "A Neglected Argument" is unambiguous in identifying retroduction as "the First Stage of Inquiry," followed by deduction and then induction (CP 6.468-473, EP 2:440-442, 1908). I agree that Phyllis Chiasson's guess (abduction? does it apply to philosophy as well?) which Jon quotes above, that retroduction is "the form of a deliberate and overarching logical method which incorporates abduction, deduction, and induction for its full performance," is certainly clever, but finally misguided, especially, as Jon notes, since as late as 1908, in "A Neglected Argument," Peirce clearly makes retroduction "the First Stage of Inquiry," followed by deduction and then induction." In any event, this is how I've come to look at the matter and how I employ the terms 'abduction' and 'retroduction' in my own thinking and writing. Indeed, more and more I tend to use 'abduction' primarily in consideration of art creation, and I use 'retroduction' and 'hypothesis' exclusively in consideration of science. So, as I see it, in sum: abduction is a general term for a certain kind of 'guessing' in the arts and (possibly) the sciences, while retroduction specifically and exclusively applies to that familiar kind of scientific thinking which works backwards, from effect to cause, and which, I believe, ought best be thought of as 'hypothesis formation." In other words, an hypothesis is the possible result of a mental act of retroduction. Best, Gary R
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