SUO: Re: Foundations For Ontology
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JA = Jon Awbrey
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.
Mary Keeler and I discussed this once -- I will see if I can find the thread.
Joe Ransdell has just posted a relevant excerpt on the Peirce List. Like so:
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Subj: abduction and the economics of research
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:30:29 -0500
From: Joseph Ransdell <ransdell@door.net>
To: Peirce List
http://lyris.acs.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?visit=peirce-l
I don't know when Peirce first introduced the idea that the selection
of a hypothesis from a set of alternatives of which all are validated
as legitimate candidates is the job of the economics of research, but
the passages from MS L75 (1902) to this effect read as follows:
============QUOTE PEIRCE=================================
MEMOIR 27
OF METHODEUTIC
Final Version - MS L75.378-380
The first business of this memoir is to show the precise
nature of methodeutic; how it differs from critic; how,
although it considers, not what is admissible, but what is
advantageous, it is nevertheless a purely theoretical study,
and not an art; how it is, from the most strictly theoretical
point of view, an absolutely essential and distinct
department of logical inquiry; and how, upon the other
hand, it is readily made useful to a researcher into any
science, even mathematics itself. It strongly resembles the
purely mathematical part of political economy, which is
also a theoretical study of advantages. Of the different
classes of arguments, abductions are the only ones in
which, after they have been admitted to be just, it still
remains to inquire whether they are advantageous. But
since the whole business of heuretic, so far as its theory
goes, falls under methodeutic, there is no kind of
argumentation that methodeutic can pass over without
notice. Nor is methodeutic confined to the consideration
of arguments. On the contrary, its special subjects have
always been understood to be the definition and division of
terms. The formation of systems of propositions, although
it has been neglected, should also evidently be included in
methodeutic. In its method, methodeutic is less strict than
critic.
From Draft B - MS L75.279-280
The first business of this memoir is to develop a precise
conception of the nature of methodeutical logic. In
methodeutic, it is assumed that the signs considered will
conform to the conditions of critic, and be true. But just as
critical logic inquires whether and how a sign corresponds
to its intended ultimate object, the reality, so methodeutic
looks to the purposed ultimate interpretant and inquires
what conditions a sign must conform to in order to be
pertinent to the purpose. Methodeutic has a special interest
in abduction, or the inference which starts a scientific
hypothesis. For it is not sufficient that a hypothesis should
be a justifiable one. Any hypothesis which explains the
facts is justified critically. But among justifiable hypotheses
we have to select that one which is suitable for being
tested by experiment. There is no such need of a
subsequent choice after drawing deductive and inductive
conclusions. Yet although methodeutic has not the same
special concern with them, it has to develop the principles
which are to guide us in the invention of proofs, those
which are to govern the general course of an investigation,
and those which determine what problems shall engage our
energies. It is, therefore, throughout of an economic
character. Two other problems of methodeutic which the
old logics usually made almost its only business are, first,
the principles of definition, and of rendering ideas clear;
and second, the principles of classification.
From Draft D - MS L75.329-330
I here consider precisely what methodeutic is. I show
that it is here permissible to resort to certain methods not
admissible in stechiologic or in critic. Primarily,
methodeutic is nothing but heuretic and concerns
abduction alone. Yet even as heuretic it indirectly has to
consider other matters; and it extends to subjects that are
not particularly heuretic. It is proper, therefore, in the
study of methodeutic, to begin with the study of heuretic.
Now it follows from the nature of truth, as analyzed in an
earlier memoir, that it is not merely hopeless, but utterly
nonsensical, to expect to discover anything except such
things as we may hope that time will reveal. Consequently,
to discover is simply to expedite an event that would occur
sooner or later, if we had not troubled ourselves to make
the discovery. Consequently, the art of discovery is purely
a question of economics. The economics of research is, so
far as logic is concerned, the leading doctrine with
reference to the art of discovery. Consequently, the
conduct of abduction, which is chiefly a question of
heuretic and is the first question of heuretic, is to be
governed by economical considerations. I show how this
leads to methodeutic inquiries of other kinds and at the
same time furnishes a key for the conduct of those
inquiries.
=============END PEIRCE QUOTE======================
To find this on-line go to:
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm
Go to Version 1 and find the Table of Contents for the MS.
Joseph Ransdell
ransdell@door.net
http://members.door.net/arisbe/homepage/ransdell.htm
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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.
JA: 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.
JA: 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.
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