ONT Re: Inquiry Into Information
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| But there are three distinct kinds of inference;
| inconvertible and different in their conception.
| There must, therefore, be three different principles
| to serve for their grounds. These three principles
| must also be indemonstrable; that is to say, each
| of them so far as it can be proved must be proved
| by means of that kind of inference of which it
| is the ground. For if the principle of either
| kind of inference were proved by another kind
| of inference, the former kind of inference
| would be reduced to the latter; and since
| the different kinds of inference are in
| all respects different this cannot be.
| You will say that it is no proof of
| these principles at all to support
| them by that which they themselves
| support. But I take it for granted
| at the outset, as I said at the beginning
| of my first lecture, that induction and hypothesis
| have their own validity. The question before us is 'why'
| they are valid. The principles, therefore, of which we
| are in search, are not to be used to prove that the
| three kinds of inference are valid, but only to
| show how they come to be valid, and the proof
| of them consists in showing that they
| determine the validity of the
| three kinds of inference.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 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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