> On Mar 3, 2016, at 3:25 PM, Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net> wrote: > > Let me just say again that abduction is not “inference to the best > explanation”. > That gloss derives from a later attempt to rationalize Peirce's idea and it > has > led to a whole literature of misconception. Abduction is more like “inference > to any explanation” — or maybe adapting Kant's phrase, “conceiving a concept > that reduces a manifold to a unity”. The most difficult part of its labor > is delivering a term, very often new or unnoticed, that can serve as > a middle term in grasping the structure of an object domain.
I fully agree and many of his quotations make clear it’s not inference to the best explanation. However we should admit that in some places he sure seems to get close to that idea. Even if it doesn’t appear to be workable. I’d argue that even when he appears to be talking about best explanation he’s much more after the fact our guesses are so often quite good. (Although I’d have to go through all the quotes to be sure that’s fair to the texts)
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