ONT Re: Inquiry Into Information
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| We are now in a condition to discuss the question
| of the grounds of scientific inference. This
| problem naturally divides itself into parts:
|
| 1st To state and prove the principles
| upon which the possibility in general
| of each kind of inference depends,
|
| 2nd To state and prove the rules
| for making inferences
| in particular cases.
|
| The first point I shall discuss in the remainder of this lecture;
| the second I shall scarcely be able to touch upon in these lectures.
|
| Inference in general obviously supposes symbolization; and
| all symbolization is inference. For every symbol as we have seen
| contains information. And in the last lecture we saw that all kinds
| of information involve inference. Inference, then, is symbolization.
| They are the same notions. Now we have already analyzed the notion
| of a 'symbol', and we have found that it depends upon the possibility
| of representations acquiring a nature, that is to say an immediate
| representative power. This principle is therefore the ground
| of inference in general.
|
| CSP, CE 1, pages 279-280.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Harvard Lectures 'On the Logic of Science'", (1865),
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
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