Jon, Gary R., List
I think, plausibility is an interesting dimension. Is it the result of Ockham´s razor? Obviously it is a dimension of abduction/retroduction, and has to do with counting backwards: The biggest plausibility is what requires the least number of explanations. Like the concept of God. Plausibility is not probabilty. Probability is a dimension of induction, and is about counting forwards, and comparing the figures. Plausibility: Is it a measure, though it does not have a calculatable value, of possibility? But without a value it is not a measure, like probability is. Rather an estimation? A phenomenon? A positive-logic-thing? Then positive logic needs negations too: It negates higher numbers of explanations for a lower number, mostly 1, of experienced qualities. Is that phaneroscopic acceptance? While negative logic negates impossibilities one by one, and acceptance is based on these negations.
Best, Helmut
08. September 2021 um 18:47 Uhr
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Gary R., List:
GR: Strange, but I woke up this morning recalling that most of my quotations yesterday were from the N.A., and the peculiar hypothesis there being of the reality of God and not some strictly scientific question put to nature, I began to question my entire analysis of yesterday.
There is no inconsistency here, since Peirce considered the hypothesis of God's reality to be legitimately scientific in accordance with his broad notion of the scope of science, which includes metaphysics. "[T]he N.A. is the First Stage of a scientific inquiry, resulting in a hypothesis of the very highest Plausibility, whose ultimate test must lie in its value in the self-controlled growth of man's conduct of life" (CP 6.480, EP 2:446, 1908).
GR: ... the guess, or abduction, or retroduction is invariably from experience.
Indeed, as we discussed on-List a couple of weeks ago (https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-08/msg00341.html), although the historical order of inquiry is abduction/retroduction followed by deduction and then induction, there is a sense in which its logical order is induction followed by abduction/retroduction.
CSP: The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds, at once,--I am partially inverting the historical order, in order to state the process in its logical order--it finds I say that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. (CP 5.589, EP 2:54-55, 1898)
Again, it is only "the well-prepared mind" that "has wonderfully soon guessed each secret of nature" (CP 6.476, EP 2:444, 1908).
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 10:10 AM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
Phyllis, List,Strange, but I woke up this morning recalling that most of my quotations yesterday were from the N.A., and the peculiar hypothesis there being of the reality of God and not some strictly scientific question put to nature, I began to question my entire analysis of yesterday.I still think 'retroduction' is an excellent term for inference from scientific consequent to antecedent for the reason you gave today, namely, the prefix, 're-'. suggesting a 'turning back' from effect to cause. And using it for scientific inquiry would leave abduction free for more general uses.However, in one of the passages I quoted yesterday, Peirce comments that "retroduction is from experience to hypothesis" (emphasis added). In that sense, whether it is a guess as to what palette of colors the painter thinks might best get her artistic vision across, or the scientist's guess that such and such an hypothesis has some likelihood of conforming to the question to nature asked by him and so worth testing, or the peculiar, singular, and very vague question regarding the reality of God, the guess, or abduction, or retroduction is invariably from experience.So, perhaps this exercise was all a terminological tempest in a teapot. Still, I'm glad to have rehearsed it yesterday and today to help clarify my own thinking about it. I just hope it wasn't too tedious for you to go through that lengthy review with me.Best,Gary R“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria RilkeGary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York
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