John,
in my opinion the diagram should contain two cycles. A "habit" cycle and
a "something unexpected happens" cyle. The diagram should also address
the fact, that the stock of knowledge changes with every turn on the
"something unexpected happens" cycle.
Maybe it would be even better to think of it as a progressing spiral,
which progresses on different levels (see attached diagram). A
unconscious habit level and a conscious something-has-happend level.
Using the dichotomy conscious/unconscious is a distinction too hard .
The levels are not divided by a sharp border, they are more like the
extremes of a continuum.
As an example: We can have these shock experiences when something
doesn't work like expected. Then it is possible that something
unconscious suddenly becomes conscious and problematic. But it also
happens that our doubt slowly grows, because many small disturbing
experiences add up (not in my diagram).
When we find a solution that settles our doubt, this solution becomes a
habit and slowly becomes more and more unconscious. It happens that we
are perfectly conditioned like pawlovian dogs. But often it is just the
case that becoming a habit means, we take premisses and results for
granted. It also happens often that there is no shock in the beginning,
instead we gradually change our beliefs and the shock experience comes
afterwards, when we realize our world view has changed dramatically.
Coming back to the change of the stock of knowledge: It is obvious that
we add information to our stock of knowledge when we have a new idea.
But it is less obvious that when something becomes a habit we (can)
forget existing doubts, premisses or rare results - the stock of
knowledge shrinks.
Depending on the position of the continuum there are differences in the
kind of abdcution involved. Using Ecos terms: On the habit side there is
overcoded abduction involved, but on the something-has-happend side it
is in contrast abduction ex novo, meta abduction etc.
Just my two cents, clearly peircean in a way, but in no sense a
interpretation close to the text.
Best,
Stefan
P.S. The diagram becomes more complex when we take into account that the
stock of knowledge is social entity.
"Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not
made it mean, and that only to some man. But since man can think only
by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn around
and say: "You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only
so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought."
In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each
increase of a man's information involves and is involved by, a
corresponding increase of a word's information."
Am 16.08.17 um 22:42 schrieb John F Sowa:
Jerry,
JFS
In his late writings on the logic of pragmatism, he emphasized the
multiple cycles of observations, induction, abduction, deduction,
testing (actions) and repeat.
JLRC> Do you have specific citations?
I wish that Peirce had used the word 'cycle' and had drawn a diagram
similar to the one I frequently use. See the attached soup1.jpg.
I pieced together passages from many of Peirce's writings about
induction, abduction, and deduction to construct that cycle.
There are many such comments scattered all through his writings.
(His lectures on pragmatism in EP vol. 2 contain many of them.)
Following is a passage (CP 5.171) that mentions all four arrows of the
cycle: abduction, deduction, testing (action), and induction:
Abduction merely suggests that something may be. Its only justification
is that from its suggestion deduction can draw a prediction which can
be tested by induction, and that, if we are ever to learn anything or
to understand phenomena at all, it must be by abduction that this is
to be brought about.
See Section 7, pp. 26 to 34, of http://jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.pdf .
Diagram 7 (p. 31) is soup1.jpg. On page 32, I use that diagram to
explain Peirce's point "truth can be nothing more nor less than the
last result to which the following out of this method would ultimately
carry us." (EP 2.379-380)
That passage implies a cycle. Peirce's lectures on pragmatism would
have been much clearer if he had drawn such a cycle.
John
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