ONT Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information
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| Accordingly, if we are engaged in symbolizing and we come to such
| a proposition as "Neat, swine, sheep, and deer are herbivorous",
| we know firstly that the disjunctive term may be replaced by a
| true symbol. But suppose we know of no symbol for neat, swine,
| sheep, and deer except cloven-hoofed animals. There is but one
| objection to substituting this for the disjunctive term; it is
| that we should, then, say more than we have observed. In short,
| it has a superfluous information. But we have already seen that
| this is an objection which must always stand in the way of taking
| symbols. If therefore we are to use symbols at all we must use
| them notwithstanding that. Now all thinking is a process of
| symbolization, for the conceptions of the understanding are
| symbols in the strict sense. Unless, therefore, we are to
| give up thinking altogeher we must admit the validity of
| induction. But even to doubt is to think. So we cannot
| give up thinking and the validity of induction must be
| admitted.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 469.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in:
|
|'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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