Jon S., list,
Thanks, but I need to correct myself. I wrote,
the scientific method is the inquiry method that, by its own
account, can go wrong as well as right
[End quote]
I should say instead that the scientific method is the inquiry method in
which inquiry, by its own account, can go wrong as well as right. One
tends to have confidence in the method itself, a kind of ideal of
self-criticism and self-correction, if not always in one's ability to
recognize and implement it.
Best, Ben
On 10/1/2016 12:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
Ben U., Gary R., List:
You have both made some great points today. Peirce clearly considered
economy of research to be an important purpose of methodeutic or
speculative (i.e., theoretical) rhetoric. He even advocated, under
certain circumstances, admitting a hypothesis that we /expect /to fail
under testing, if this can be done quickly and inexpensively, such
that we may then dismiss it once and for all. Even when a hypothesis
apparently "passes" the tests to which we subject it, the point of
Peirce's fallibilism is that we continue to hold it tentatively, at
least to some degree, because it always remains subject to further
testing that might reveal a need to adjust or perhaps abandon it.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com
<mailto:baud...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Gary R., list,
"Good" is traditionally taken as meaning "valid" or "justified"
when applied to an inference. Valid deductions can conclude in
falsehoods by vice of falsehood among the premisses, and we can
see both critical and methodeutical kinds of justification of an
abductive inference that can nevertheless turn out, upon testing,
to conclude in a falsehood, e.g., the hypothesis of a detectable
ether wind in the theoretical effort to save the Galilean
transformations; the disconfirmation of the ether wind led
eventually to the triumph of the Lorentz transformations, amid
which the Galilean transformations survive as an approximation for
things moving slowly in one's reference frame, and it led to the
quantitative unification of time and space (with lightspeed as
yardstick, e.g., years and light-years), which simply isn't there
in the Galilean and (unreconstructed) Newtonian pictures; in any
case the hypothesis of an ether wind is quite dead, but it was
critically and methodeutically justified as far as it went; it was
plausible, distinctive predictions were deducible from it, and
indeed its adoption bore fruit. Researchers need to be able to
state that a hypothesis has been ruled out in plain enough words
to keep communication clear because the scientific method is the
inquiry method that, by its own account, can go wrong as well as
right. They don't always say "shown to be false," they'll say
"ruled out" or "disconfirmed" or "disfavored" or the like. The
majority of explanatory hypotheses, even the fruitful ones, turn
out to be false; the surprising thing, as Peirce often pointed
out, is that they aren't false much oftener. - Best, Ben
On 10/1/2016 11:34 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Ben, Jon, List,
Ben, you commented:
"An abductive inference may be good and successful in terms of
the economics of inquiry, even if it turns out to conclude in a
falsehood, if it nevertheless helps research by either making it
positively fruitful (think of all the hypotheses that positively
help lead to truth without scoring a 'hole in one') or at least
by leading to knowledge of a previously unknown dead end that
would otherwise have caused waste of time and energy."
I would tend to agree strongly with this but wonder whether
'falsehood' is the best expression to describe what happens in
such a case. The abduction is 'good' if it is testable, even if
the hypothesis is not, or not fully, borne out. As you suggested,
information is sometimes gained from testing such hypotheses
which, in the economy of research, is useful for further inquiry.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
*Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
-----------------------------
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 .
