Re: SUO: Re: Foundations, Foundlings, Fountains, etc... Of Ontology
robert marty wrote:
> John Sowa apparently makes a correct use of the term 'abduction':
> quote 1:
> "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 "
> Quote 2:
> " Beneath it all, there is a real world, which the entire community of
> inquirers learns to approximate through repeated cycles of observation,
> induction, abduction, deduction, and testing."
> although I don't agree with the order of the elements which should be
> instead abduction, induction, deduction since the idea of the law is a
> Firstness (abduction) logically precedes the scope of the law (induction)
> which is then verified by deduction.
> For that matter, it is the case in this debate: the debate is so far purely
> academic and will remain so, as long as its practical consequences (obtained
> by deduction) are not put through a reality check.
I plan to delete the comment about how CSP came to discover his
principle of abduction, since it is irrelevant to the major issues
that I was discussing in the article, "Signs, Processes, and
Language Games". I would rather not have the discussion of the
main issues, which are fundamental to everything that is being
done in SUO, distracted by that point.
I placed them in the order deduction, induction, and abduction,
since that is the ordering that Peirce himself used in many
of his writings. In some writings, he also used the ordering
"abduction, induction, and deduction", which is the same ordering
as possibility (a hypothesis derived by abduction), actuality
(a statement confirmed by induction), and necessity (deduction).
I find the parallel with possibility, actuality, and necessity
a strong argument for putting abduction first. However, Peirce
also gave the lecture "Pragmatism as the logic of abduction"
as his 7th Harvard lecture of 1903. In that lecture, he emphasized
the need for deduction to infer the consequences of any hypothesis
found by abduction and for induction to evaluate its agreement
with actuality.
Bottom line: Abduction, by itself, generates unevaluated hypotheses,
which are pure possibilities (Firstness). But the logic of abduction
(pragmatism) must derive necessary consequences (Thirdness) and test
their correspondence with actuality (Secondess). So the logic of
abduction must involve all three.
John Sowa