John, Clark, List:
> On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:59 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > List, <> > > Another point that is often overlooked in discussions of inference to the > best explanation, which I agree is not the same as abduction, though I think > abduction is more restrictive than just inference to any hypothesis from > which the evidence might be inferred, is that the best explanation need not > be a good explanation, so we need more than inference to the best explanation > to carry out inquiry responsibly. The simple question arises: If an abductive step is taken by the inquirer, then what? For example, say that a sinsign and its legisigns and qualisigns provide the informative extension to generate an index, how does one take this abductive object and move through the inferential steps needed to generate a valid argument? Or, from a different logical perspective, what information is needed to extend (in the Aristotelian sense of intensional logic) the index to the (telelogical?) goal of the inquirer? Cheers Jerry > > From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] > Sent: Friday, 04 March 2016 12:35 AM > To: Peirce List > Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Abduction, Deduction, Induction : Analogy, Inquiry > > > On Mar 3, 2016, at 3:25 PM, Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net > <mailto: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) > > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu > . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu > with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at > http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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