SUO: Re: Fountains Of Ontology
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JS = John Sowa
RM = Robert Marty
JS: CSP wrote many things about deduction, induction,
and abduction. It is important to realize that
Peirce's trichotomy is a metalevel category that
can be used to generate multiple categories in
multiple ways.
JS: I am traveling right now, so I don't have access to all my
books and notes, so I can't quote the appropriate references.
However, if someone would be so kind as to look up CSP's
classification of the various fields of science (including
both the physical and the psychical), there is something in
his later philosophy where he puts mathematics at the top,
and everything else under it. In that same classification,
he subdivides the field of "critical logic" into "deduction,
induction, and abduction" in that order.
RM, quoting JS:
| Peirce also applied his trichotomy to subdivide these subfields.
| In analyzing the techniques of logical reasoning, he observed that
| deduction exemplifies Firstness because it depends only on the syntax
| of propositions. Induction exemplifies Secondness because it depends on
| a dyadic relation between propositions and reality. In looking for the
| missing third, he discovered the principle of abduction, which generates
| new hypotheses, which are further tested by the techniques of deduction
| and induction.
RM, citing C.S. Peirce ...
JS: As I said above, I don't believe that those citations
contradict what I said in this paragraph.
JS: I also agree with Jon A. that Peirce discovered parallels
with Aristotle's classifications, but many other people
had read the same material without discovering abduction.
As Heraclitus observed, such discoveries are only made by
people who "expect the unexpected" in just the right way.
So I would stand by my claim that Peirce was primed by
his own trichotomy to interpret Aristotle's terms in
his characteristic way.
My present focus is on abductive reasoning, concept formation,
diagnosis, explanation, hypothesis generation, ontology genesis,
paradigm shifting, theory change -- its names are legion -- and
there is no doubt that this is the "hard case", the "missing link"
of the entire inquiry process. That is the overriding reason that
I keep trying to understand its nature. For my own part in this,
I will try to resist invoking Peirce's Categories until I have
explained them better in relative and existential terms rather
than resorting to absolute and essential grounds. Just as the
vaguest hint of how I tend to interpret these classifications,
I think it is suggestive to think of the sundry dimensions of
projection that one can take of a 3-dim body in OxSxI space,
in other words, a sign relation. If L c OxSxI, we have the
following projections:
1. p_1 : L -> O,
p_2 : L -> S,
p_3 : L -> I.
2. p_12 : L -> OxS,
p_13 : L -> OxI,
p_23 : L -> SxI.
3. p_123 : L -> OxSxI.
As I understand them, 1st-ness, 2nd-ness, 3rd-ness are abstractions
from solid realities, a matter of the aspects to which we attend
and the depth of perspective that we apply to what we observe,
nothing more.
Jon Awbrey
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