Jon, All,

Jon, I'm glad my post was for a helpful summary for you in the matter
of at least Peirce's changing views of the three inference patterns in
relation to the categories.

Just a brief comment on your 'Subject' line. Ben and I would like to
encourage you and everyone here to follow Joe Ransdell's advice when
changing a subject line (and I think it was quite proper for you to
change this one, Jon) that after the change that one adds "was,
[whatever the former Subject was]" including enough of the former
Subject line for identicatory purposes. This will be helpful in any
number of ways for use of whatever archive or folder may end up
containing these posts in the future.

Best,

Gary and Ben

On 3/2/12, Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net> wrote:
> Thanks, Gary, this is a very helpful summary.
>
> Jon
>
> cc: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List
>
> Gary Richmond wrote:
>> Cathy, Stephen, list,
>>
>> Cathy, you wrote: "I don't see how one might interpret induction as
>> secondness though.Though a *misplaced* induction may well lead to the
>> secondness of surprise due to error."
>>
>> And yet that's exactly how Peirce saw it for most of his career (with
>> the brief lapse mentioned in my earlier  post and commented on by him
>> in the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism). There he wrote:
>>
>> "Abduction, or the suggestion of an explanatory theory, is inference
>> through an Icon, and is thus connected with Firstness; Induction, or
>> trying how things will act, is inference through an Index, and is thus
>> connected with Secondness; Deduction, or recognition of the relations
>> of general ideas, is inference through a Symbol, and is thus connected
>> with Thirdness. . . [My] connection of Abduction with Firstness,
>> Induction with Secondness, and Deduction with Thirdness was confirmed
>> by my finding no essential subdivisions of Abduction; that Inducion
>> split, at once, into the Sampling of Collections, and the Sampling of
>> Qualities. . . " (*Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right
>> Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism*, Turrisi, ed.
>> 276-7).
>>
>> Shortly after this he comments on his brief period of "confusion" in the
>> matter.
>>
>> "[In] the book called *Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns
>> Hopkins University*, while I stated the rationale of induction pretty
>> well, I confused Abduction with the Second kind of Induction, that is
>> the induction of qualities. Subsequently, writing in the seventh
>> volume of the Monist, sensible of the error of that book but not quite
>> understanding in what it consisted I stated the rationale of Induction
>> in a manner more suitable to Abduction, and still later in lectures
>> here in Cambridge I represented Induction to be connected with the
>> third category and Deduction with the Second" [op. cit, 277].
>>
>> [You can also read the entire deleted section by googling "At the time
>> I first published this division of inference" and 'Peirce'.]
>>
>> So, as he sees he, for those few years Peirce was "confused" about
>> these categorial associations. In that sensePeirce is certainly at
>> least partially at fault in creating a confusion in the minds of many
>> a thinker about the categorial associations of the three inference
>> patterns. Still, he continues in that section by stating:
>>
>> "At present [that is, in 1903] I am somewhat disposed to revert to my
>> original opinion" yet adds that he "will leave the question
>> undecided." Still, after 1903 he never associates deduction with
>> anything but thirdness,  nor induction with anything but 2ns.
>>
>> I myself have never been able to think of deduction as anything but
>> thirdness, nor induction as anything but 2ns, and I think that I
>> mainly have stuck to that way of thinking because when, in
>> methodeutic, Peirce employs the three categories together in
>> consideration of a "complete inquiry"--as he does, for example, very
>> late in life in *The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God* in the
>> section the CP editors titled "The Three Stages of Inquiry" [CP 6.468
>> - 6.473; also, EP 2:440 - 442]--he *explicitly* associates abduction
>> (here, 'retroduction' of the hypothesis) with 1ns, deduction (of the
>> retroduction's implications for the purposes of devising tests of it)
>> with 3ns, and induction (as the inductive testing once devised) with
>> 2ns.
>>
>> But again, as these particular categorial associations apparently
>> proved confusing  even for Peirce, constituting one of the very few
>> tricategorial matters in which he changed his mind (and, then, back
>> again!), I too will at least try to leave the question undecided (for
>> now).
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Gary
>
> --
>
> academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
> inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
> mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
> oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
> word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/
> word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
>


-- 
Gary Richmond
Humanities Department
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College--City University of New York

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L 
listserv.  To remove yourself from this list, send a message to 
lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the 
message.  To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Reply via email to