Re: Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

Thanks, Gary, this is a very helpful summary.

Jon

cc: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List

Gary Richmond wrote:
> Cathy, Stephen, list,
> 
> Cathy, you wrote: "I don't see how one might interpret induction as
> secondness though.Though a *misplaced* induction may well lead to the
> secondness of surprise due to error."
> 
> And yet that's exactly how Peirce saw it for most of his career (with
> the brief lapse mentioned in my earlier  post and commented on by him
> in the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism). There he wrote:
> 
> "Abduction, or the suggestion of an explanatory theory, is inference
> through an Icon, and is thus connected with Firstness; Induction, or
> trying how things will act, is inference through an Index, and is thus
> connected with Secondness; Deduction, or recognition of the relations
> of general ideas, is inference through a Symbol, and is thus connected
> with Thirdness. . . [My] connection of Abduction with Firstness,
> Induction with Secondness, and Deduction with Thirdness was confirmed
> by my finding no essential subdivisions of Abduction; that Inducion
> split, at once, into the Sampling of Collections, and the Sampling of
> Qualities. . . " (*Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right
> Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism*, Turrisi, ed.
> 276-7).
> 
> Shortly after this he comments on his brief period of "confusion" in the matter.
> 
> "[In] the book called *Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns
> Hopkins University*, while I stated the rationale of induction pretty
> well, I confused Abduction with the Second kind of Induction, that is
> the induction of qualities. Subsequently, writing in the seventh
> volume of the Monist, sensible of the error of that book but not quite
> understanding in what it consisted I stated the rationale of Induction
> in a manner more suitable to Abduction, and still later in lectures
> here in Cambridge I represented Induction to be connected with the
> third category and Deduction with the Second" [op. cit, 277].
> 
> [You can also read the entire deleted section by googling "At the time
> I first published this division of inference" and 'Peirce'.]
> 
> So, as he sees he, for those few years Peirce was "confused" about
> these categorial associations. In that sensePeirce is certainly at
> least partially at fault in creating a confusion in the minds of many
> a thinker about the categorial associations of the three inference
> patterns. Still, he continues in that section by stating:
> 
> "At present [that is, in 1903] I am somewhat disposed to revert to my
> original opinion" yet adds that he "will leave the question
> undecided." Still, after 1903 he never associates deduction with
> anything but thirdness,  nor induction with anything but 2ns.
> 
> I myself have never been able to think of deduction as anything but
> thirdness, nor induction as anything but 2ns, and I think that I
> mainly have stuck to that way of thinking because when, in
> methodeutic, Peirce employs the three categories together in
> consideration of a "complete inquiry"--as he does, for example, very
> late in life in *The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God* in the
> section the CP editors titled "The Three Stages of Inquiry" [CP 6.468
> - 6.473; also, EP 2:440 - 442]--he *explicitly* associates abduction
> (here, 'retroduction' of the hypothesis) with 1ns, deduction (of the
> retroduction's implications for the purposes of devising tests of it)
> with 3ns, and induction (as the inductive testing once devised) with
> 2ns.
> 
> But again, as these particular categorial associations apparently
> proved confusing  even for Peirce, constituting one of the very few
> tricategorial matters in which he changed his mind (and, then, back
> again!), I too will at least try to leave the question undecided (for
> now).
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gary

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