Jerry, That is certainly the main issue that needs to be resolved in full. The phenomena to be explained have to be identified by the abductive inference. This would be the index part of the proposition. The qualitative part has to be able to allow this identification. Together they must permit an interpretation that we have a way to use in pactice. I would say that it is the effectiveness of the last that determines how good the abduction is. I suspect that the answer involves considering a number of factors.
For example, Newtonian space and time are one way to explain the bucket thought experiment. But even in Newton's own time it was observed (e.g. by Leibniz) that the explanation couldn't be tested (it failed the pragmatic maxim). Mach made the problem even more clear. It was not a good explanation on those grounds, though it was good enough for Newton and for most physicists up to Einstein. John Sent from my Samsung device -------- Original message -------- From: Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected]> Date: 2016/03/10 00:07 (GMT+02:00) To: Peirce List <[email protected]> Cc: Clark Goble <[email protected]>, John Collier <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Abduction, Deduction, Induction : Analogy, Inquiry John, Clark, List: On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:59 AM, John Collier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> 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:[email protected]] 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 <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> 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 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 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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