This is a re-threading of a conversation begun in response to a question about what, if anything, distinguishes science from other human undertakings.
Abduction is a huge can of worms. I like to think of it in its narrowest sense, as inferring the class membership of an individual from knowledge of the properties of the class and the properties of the individual -- "This bird is black; All ravens are black; this bird is a raven." With one concordant property, this inference is "intolerably weak", but valid. Its probability increases with the discovery of more concordant properties. "This bird is black and says, "Nevermore"; all ravens are black and say "Nevermore"; this bird is a raven" . Etc. This sort of thinking can be used to impute causes, but it is not limited to doing so.
There is no question that Peirce broadened his use of the term after 1900. I am inclined to think of this broadening as sloppy thinking brought on by the stress of having become an outsider to a world in which he was once the consummate insider. He lost his Civis Harvardus Sum. I lost mine at an early age, so I may be projecting. Many people, I gather, see this "sloppiness" as the beginning of his true genius.
I find the later accounts of abduction disappointing because they give up on the project of providing a logical account of these "inspired guesses". I thought I saw in the early Peirce a determination to provide a logical account of the whole of scientific thinking and for him to give an account of scientific creativity which goes something like, "And then a miracle happens" was a big come-down for me. I want to know how these "bold conjectures" are arrived at, and I thought when I started reading Peirce, that ultimately he was going to tell me.
Nicholas,
I disagree that Peirce's thinking after 1900 is sloppy. He simply mored onto more philosophical problems that could not be clarified by their very nature to the level of clarity that scientific and mathematical subject can. The topic of abduction, the most creative part of the scientific process is not a mondane topic. Why is it that Peirce ''inspired guessing'' was so effective? He tried to provide his own insight on his insight. Do you think that he could deliver a nice charted map about a creation method that anyone could follow and become a creative scientist?
Louis,
Thanks for your comment.
I may be having trouble with the RG interface again, because I swear I already responded to this post. .Sorry if I am duplicating.
My belief is a belief about Peirce. It is that he was the sort of man who would have delivered a "nice charted map about a creation method" if he could. He was not into sustaining glorious mysteries. He was into finding things out and resolving doubt. And I think he might have said that, IF scientific creativity IS the sort of thing that one can do science about (i.e., it is not, like most things, entirely random) , THEN, in the very long run, in the deep future of human cognition, or the future of the cognizing species that follows us, there WILL be delivered a "nice charted map ... that anyone could follow and become a creative scientist." As for what I think: well, to the extent that i am a Peircean at this point, I think the bathtub of doubt is something to be drained and tidied up, not something to be lolled around in.
My hope is that we can come to share beliefs about (resolve our doubts about) Peirce through this forum through the sharing of data about Peirce. In that spirit, I have some negative data to share for my hypothesis about Peirce (stated in the question I asked) that he is a rationalist with respect to science. I am reading the Brent biography, and it does appear that the word 'guessing' does make its appearance in his work long before his unhappy time as a fugitive on the streets of NYC around the end of the 19th Century. My disappointment is deepened. Stay tuned. N
Sorry. Can I say one thing more? The problem is that I think I know where bold conjectures come from, and I want Peirce to help me to argue for my belief. I think they come from metaphors, which are dangerously like "signs". I think that models are crucial to scientific thinking and that ALL models ARE metaphors. But I also don't think there is anything irrational about metaphor-making. There, I've said it.
Nicholas,
What text from Peirce do you consider as essential? What are his main contributing ideas? I also think that all models are metaphors and that our innate metaphor-making is our myth-making and this is based on primate political mind.
Oh gosh. The two of the most widely read papers are How to Make Your Ideas Clear, which is an argument for the pragmatic maxim (the meaning of a concept consists in all the consequences for action belief in it might conceivably have), and the Fixation of Belief, in which we learn that the real is that which is as it is, no matter what you, I or anyone else might belief it to be, and that the truth is that which cognizing humans are fated to agree upon in the indefinitely long run. However, none of this made the much sense to me until I read some of his work on probability and mathematics, in which it becomes clear that he thinks most things are random in the universe and therefore the problem of distinguishing the apparent regularities produce by random events from the "real" regularities produced by real 'generals" is a matter of statistical inference. Thus the real is distinguished from the happenstantial by the fact that the more you examine it ... the more samples you take .... the more your observations converge.
But please take this all with a grain of salt. I am no Peirce expert and, I belief, there are some Peirce materials that have yet to be read. If you go to www.cspeirce.com, you can feast on texts more or less endlessly.
Louis, apparently we are one of several threads on Peirce on the RG site? How do I find the others?
N
Hi everyone,
I wrote a manuscript on peircean abduction for a general audience. I'd love to hear your comments on whether it might be useful to you for clarifying your notion of abduction.
Best,
Jerry
Jerry,
did you post it? Isn't there a utility on this website that allows you to post a ms and accumulate comments from your colleagues? If so, let's try it out!
Nick Thompson
Hi Nicholas,
You should be able to find it if you click my name and go to the contributions tab. If that doesn't work, we published open access, so please just google it. The title is:
Promoting convergence: The phi spiral in abduction of mouse corneal behaviors
hth,
Jerry
Dear Professor Rhee,
I apologize for having dropped this ball. I did go to the website, did not immediately find the article you sent me. I did, however, find a brief article which seemed to equate convergence with interdisciplinary work. I fully agreed with the idea that convergence is facilitated by interdisciplinary work, and did not pursue the matter further. Lazy
With respect to the connection between interdisciplinary work and convergence, I call to your attention the history of the computer work at the Institute for Advanced Study written by Dyson's son, Turing's Cathedral. The Institute starts out as a Deweyan paradise and monument to the idea of interdisciplinary communication and ends up as a bomb factory ... probably the most horrific instance of the co-optation of a liberal arts institution by dark money that we can imagine. And yet .... and yet ... they did build the computer, and they did build the bomb! (Well, i suppose Los Alamos did have SOMETHING to do with it). Frankly, I don't know what to think. But definitely something to ponder on for any of us who might be addicted to Koch.
One lesson might be that the arrow of causality might not be that interdisciplinary work promotes convergence; rather that, convergence on a practical problem of some sort, promotes successful interdisciplinary research. Does it matter what the practical project is? Would putting a man on the moon have done as well? Or the solar airplane?
Anyway, .... only today did I actually find the paper you directed me to. Before I get to work on it, let me review where I think we stand. We have a bunch of ideas floating around, convergence, abduction, metaphorical thinking, analogical reasoning, interdisciplinary work, inspired guessing, bold conjecturing, practical reasoning etc., which we feel are related, and we are groping for How To Make These Ideas Clear. I will post again when I have read your article. Sorry for the long delay.
Nick Thompson
Dear Nicholas,
There is a connection between machine and policical power,
the ultimate machine is the computer in network, the ultimate destructive power is the nuclear bomb and the articulation of all this is mathematical. That connection has always been there since the beginning of civilisation. Look at the oldest monuments: the pyramids, it is obviously build by mathematician, who plan with mathematic and who slave peoples and a centralized state. Nothing change except the scale. I did read the conclusion of the Turing's Cathedral and found it outragious a kind of worshipn of inevitability of human asservissment to machines
Uhmmm...how did we get here from talking about abduction? Abduction is a lot of things but at the end of the day, it is 3 simple lines, a syllogism, and our interaction with it. Its value is dictated by how we use it. That is, in filling out what C and A are and computing consequences. How we then use deduction to make an induction is up to us but has to be verified by others, the ideal setting of which is the commens.
Abduction is simply a structured way of solving problems so that we can come to agreement.
“…that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place … may be called the commens. It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfill its function.”
Charles S. Peirce, 1906
http://www.commens.org/about
Jerry,
Go back to my original question and I think you will see how we got here. If not, I will try to explain. In the meantime, thank you for "commens". It's a new one, for me.
Nick Thompson
To attempt a complete simplification with respect to my statement above, "Abduction is a lot of things but at the end of the day, it is 3 simple lines, a syllogism, and our interaction with it":
"Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C." (Peirce 1902, NEM 4, 20–21).
Therefore,
C = object (whatever we can talk about, vision/phenomenon/explanandum),
A = sign (what we say the object is, argumentative finesse/mechanism/explanans),
B = interpretant (the commens)
Inquiry = the duration from surprise to matter of course/fixation of belief, by way of suspicion...
Argument = "An “Argument” is any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief." (eg., the concept of abduction, cf., CP 5.189)
Argumentation = "An “Argumentation” is an Argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premisses." (eg., the example of phi spiral abduction)
Truth = "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real."
From “THE TENSION BETWEEN DIRECT EXPERIENCE AND ARGUMENT IN RELIGION”, John E. Smith
"The problem, it will be recalled, was how to retain both direct experience and argument (used in a different manner here, ie., "that an Argument is a Sign which is understood to represent its Object in its character as Sign."~Peirce, JR) and so relate them that the former is not surpassed or rendered superfluous, while the latter bestows upon experience a rationality that delivers it from the charge of fancy, wish or caprice.
The original experience in musement retains the force of conviction which it alone can deliver, while the arguments lend indirect support to that experience by making manifest the intelligible character it possesses. Neither ingredient is expendable."
After some very helpful posts, this thread died in infancy. I continue to be bemused by Peirce and so have started a project on the sign relation. I would love some help over there, if you have time..
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Just-what-is-the-form-of-the-sign-relation-in-Peirce-and-what-sort-of-arguments-are-appropriate-in-statements-of-that-relation
Nick Thompson
Hi Nick,
I’ve learned a lot about abduction since we last talked.
Your current question deals with how we ought to deal with terms and relations of ‘Sign’.
For a Peircean view, a good starting point will be What is a Sign?, L 463: Letter to Lady Welby and A New List of Categories because they provide good philosophical definitions for ‘symbol’ and ‘sign’. Like ‘being’, the terms are treated in many senses but embedded in a context with sequence, contrariety and unity (c.f., Metaphysics, Book IV).
But there are lots of ways and lots of good reasons for why we should start elsewhere. Justifications run long and narratives have been elaborated and forgotten many times over. In that sense, like Callicles and Socrates, one can get buried in a mountain of words. Instead, what we want is movement.
So, if you’re after scientific consensus, then how about starting with a singular question: Is CP 5.189 and not CP 5.402 where we ought to start?
Yes…or no. Yes! Because fruits!
_______
“The third grade of clearness consists in such a representation of the idea that fruitful reasoning can be made to turn upon it, and that it can be applied to the resolution of difficult practical problems”
““Ye may know them by their fruits,”…
Their fruit is, therefore, collective; it is the achievement of the whole people."
"All pragmatists will further agree that their method of ascertaining the meanings of words and concepts is no other than that experimental method by which all the successful sciences (in which number nobody in his senses would include metaphysics) have reached the degrees of certainty that are severally proper to them today; - this experimental method being itself nothing but a particular application of an older logical rule, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’"
Hth,
Jerry Rhee
Thanks, Jerry. And yes (amazingly) I had overlooked "fruits" in my earlier reading of these passages. So very glad to have them pointed out to me. But we have to be careful, of course, to know what we mean about "fruits". We don't just mean a sea of little papers parameterizing some subject. What we mean, ultimately, is robust, enduring resolution of doubt. The fruit of having good eyesight is that you don't keep walking into doors. The fruit of having a good theory is that you don't keep bumping your head against unexpected experimental results.
I still want to press on with the abduction project. I think I will add soon an analysis of the examples I posted there (The sign Game) and also, begin on a list of irreducibly triadic conceptions, including, but not limited to Sign, abduction, cue, stimulus, and function. I suspect that there is a common set of rules underlying them all. I agree with you it's all a lot of words, but I am pushing 80, and it's something I can do, so I think I will do it. It would be wonderful If I was able to draw in a few people from around the world and we, collectively, could get somewhere with it. Grow some fruit.
I am happy to be in touch, again,
Nick
It's more than that. It is the inference that is the precondition of all other (deductive and inductive) inferences. Deductions, after all, need premises. Where do they come from? Abduction. Inductions need to expand from samples of sort. Why was that specific sample sampled? Abduction.
Think of inquiry as a process, akin to drawing a continuous or broken line on a surface. Suppose that I instruct you to continue any line. That is a simple instruction. However, if there are no lines on the surface, where do you start?
You need somewhere to begin -- even if in hindsight you determine that the starting point that you guessed into motion was less than ideal.
This, in essence, is abduction.
Yes, but ..... (I used to forbid my students to say that!)
Yes, but doesn't that metaphor beg the question of where to draw the first line? I assume that some abductions are better than others and that philosophers of science (particularly Peircean ones) have an obligation to find ways to improve our skills of abduction, no? I think the way to fulfill that obligation is to think of abduction as a part of a cycle of inferences and to come up with virtuous cycles.
"philosophers of science (particularly Peircean ones) have an obligation to find ways to improve our skills of abduction, no?"
No! Across the field, we would hope that some choose to put their intellectual efforts towards that task, but nothing about the more basic effort obligates anyone to do so. At best, they have an obligation to point out when, and under what circumstances, scientists do abduction. It would be nice if they note principles that seem to relate to success and failure in such endeavors, but that might be more of a History of Science issue.
Wait a minute! What you describe is an empirical study of scientific behavior. That is psychology or sociology of science, not philosophy of science. Philosophy of Science is the Science of Right Thinking. It has to do with thoe ways of thinking that would lead to correct conclusions [in the long run]. Haven't you fallen prey to the naturalistic fallacy?
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