Talk:Abductive reasoning/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

premise, premiss

The standard spelling seems to be premise. If Peirce's preferred spelling is otherwise, this can be noted once the reader knows what we are talking about. The introduction should not use premiss without explanation. Tkuvho (talk) 10:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

'Premiss' is the British spelling, 'premise' is its American counterpart. It doesn't matter which we use, but we should be consistent. Feel free to choose and edit accordingly.

Incidentally, remember that 'abduction' is a term coined by Peirce but is not his concept. Abduction was being performed literally hundreds of thousands of years before Peirce was born, and philosophers have discussed it on their own terms since.--Heyitspeter (talk) 11:04, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I see that some of the quotations from Peirce in the article use the American spelling. As far as the history of the concept, it would be useful to incorporate it in the history section here. Tkuvho (talk) 11:15, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

(He is American after all)Nah we should just use "premise" to keep the page in line with Peirce and American spelling in general. It's not a historical peculiarity that 'premiss' is used in this article, it's just that a British (or perhaps French) editor made some edits at some point. I'll make that change now. Good call.--Heyitspeter (talk) 11:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The new edit introduced some of the old terminology that has been discussed already in this space. The text To abduce a from b involves determining that a is sufficient (or nearly sufficient), but not necessary, for b. In still other words, though a cannot be deduced from b, a would entail b, so we can infer a from b to make sense of the latter does not seem to be based on Peirce, and is unnecessarily formal. There are enough quotations from Peirce to show conclusively the he did not mean b to be a formal consequence of a in an abduction, and on the contrary insisted on the informal nature of the implication a==>b. The parenthetical remark "(or nearly sufficient)" is not really self-explanatory, particularly since the link is to the same old logical discussion of "necessary and sufficient". Tkuvho (talk) 12:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Heyitspeter, you're improvising and making mistakes.
- Peirce's preferred spelling for a logical premiss/premise is "premiss." (Sometimes journal editors insisted on "premise"; sometimes Peirce may have varied, in his vast corpus, but he expressed a preference for "premiss.") And for once a British spelling is truer than an American spelling to the Latin (praemissum). Your explanations of how the spelling "premiss" appeared here are simply mistaken guesses stated with easy assurance. I don't know how many instances of "premiss" were already in the wiki before I came along, but I'm the one who uses "premiss" regularly in discussions of logic here and elsewhere. I was born in the USA, have lived in the USA all my life, and usually prefer American spellings ("honor," not "honour," etc.).
- Contrary to your statements (more mistaken guesses), Peirce did not coin the word "abduction" nor was he the first to use it to translate Aristotle's apagoge. What's original is Peirce's interpretation and valorization of Aristotle's apagoge, which Peirce also for years believed was Apellicon's mistakenly inserted word, arguing that Apellicon thereby had caused Aristotle's idea to be misunderstood in the past.
You have removed words such as "curious" and "surprising" and that is contrary to Peirce's definitions and descriptions of abduction both in earlier and later years. Originally the idea was a necessary part of the background discussion; in 1903 he made it an explicit part of the abductive form itself. You may not like Peirce's having done that, but that doesn't give you the right to revise Peirce. The introduction covers the basics of the concept as introduced by Peirce. Your content revisions really are not justifiable by saying that abduction was performed for hundreds of thousands of years before Peirce and that philosophers have discussed it in their own terms since. That kind of talk is just hand-waving.
- You haven't even tried to establish your seeming view that other philosophers think that the ideas of the explanandum's surprise and the explanation's removal of surprisingness are ideas not needed in order to characterize abduction or distinguish it from induction. I personally suspect that one could so define abduction as to both have surprise as abduction's characteristic occasion yet distinguish abduction from induction by differences of the implication relations between premiss set and conclusion set, but that's my POV which I don't try to put into the wiki. You do seem to be starting to realize that your argument is with Peirce, not just with this wiki. But this is an inappropriate way for you to pursue your disagreements with Peirce.
- Peirce is quite specific that the explanation need not deductively entail the explanandum; what it must do is make the surprising explanandum unsurprising; making it necessary is good, too, but is not itself necessary. That he held that the entailment needs to be deductive is a not very uncommon misconception based on Peirce's earlier writings (as can be gleaned from the "History of the concept" section); there are no longer excuses for this misconception now that resources such as the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, with Peirce's own definitions collected from his unwieldy corpus, is available free online. Your edit now makes the intro paragraph inconsistent as well as overly formal, as Tkuvho says, on the issue. Those of your edits which have changed the content are contrary to the original source and unsupported by arguments. Later sections go into later formalizations of the idea and that is good enough. The Tetrast (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 17:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC).

I should add that you initially presented your content edits as "paraphrases" of Peirce whom you found "confusing." Now you're suggesting that you base your content edits on something else and saying that we should tamp the Peirce stuff down. But you have provided zero references, for example for your pet idiosyncratic notion that abduction or any mode of inference can be defined by implication/entailment relations among propositions per se. You must provide references and quotations. You seem to be improvising out of thin air. At this point I've restored much of the original paragraph and done some rewriting, with plenty of supporting references, and have made it clearer where Peirce's idea is being discussed, and made clear also that Peirce has not been the be-all and end-all of the idea of abduction. The Tetrast (talk) 18:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 20:17, 9 August 2010 (UTC) Edited The Tetrast (talk) 20:25, 9 August 2010 (UTC).

premiss, bis

Folks, let's please discuss things one at a time and in short sentences. Tetrast seems to confirm my impression that premiss was Peirce's preferred spelling, while premise is the standard american spelling which also appeared in some of Peirce's texts. I still don't think we should use "premiss" without some additional explanation. How about using "premise" followed by a parenthetical remark "(or premiss, Peirce's preferred spelling)"? Once this is resolved, we can go on to other aspects of abduction, surprising or otherwise. Tkuvho (talk) 19:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't really care. So I changed all instances of "premiss" and "premisses" to "premise" and "premises." The Tetrast (talk) 19:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC).

First sentence

I see that the term "guessing" has appeared. Has Peirce ever used "guesswork"? Tkuvho (talk) 19:43, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't find where he more or less flatly called abduction "guesswork" or "guess-work" or "guess work." But a number of times over the years he more or less flatly called it "guessing" (see the footnote in the wiki.) When one references an idea that some may find a bit hard to swallow, it's better to quote the word (e.g., Peirce's word "guessing"). On the level of nuances (which I'm discovering in editing this article), "guessing" is probably (I won't say 'certainly' at this point) better than "guesswork" insofar as guesswork suggests something more than an individual abduction, whereas the word "guessing" could refer to a single act just as well as to guessing again and again. Guesswork suggests elaborating a complex of abductions, or selecting among various abduced hypotheses by rating them for plausibility, or exploring their collective logical structure for how they can affect one's inquirial strategy (e.g., so that one proceeds by a process of elimination where one tests first the hypothesis that would involve the least work, or, more generally, least cost in whatever sense, to test for falsity - a process used not only in science but in practical matters, e.g., trying to figure out where and why a roof is leaking). The Tetrast (talk) 16:01, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

Magnani

Magnani is one of the most prolific authors on abduction, and should probably be quoted here. Tkuvho (talk) 14:36, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I haven't read him. Do you already know some good quotes? I looked at Aliseda's review (PDF) of Mangani's 2001 book Abduction, Reason, and Science. Processes of Discovery and Explanation. Among many other things, Aliseda says that Mangani gets into the issues of economy and testing, as issues important for understanding of abduction. It looks interesting. Aliseda also says: "By placing abduction at the heart of the foundations of AI from philosophical, cognitive, and computational perspectives, the author" - i.e., Mangani - "makes us aware that abduction is not at all a new topic of research." (I.e., it didn't begin with computer science.) At the heart! I'd like to read Mangani. Aliseda also discusses Mangani's distinction between abduction to a plausible explanation (question of logical critic, as CSP called it, concerned with individual abductions) and abduction to the best explanation (choosing from among hypotheses and getting into broader methodology or methodeutic as CSP called it). Methodeutic is also where McKaughan's 2008 "From Ugly Duckling to Swan: C. S. Peirce, Abduction, and the Pursuit of Scientific Theories" (find in the wiki's footnotes) comes in, getting into the idea of selecting the most "pursuit-worthy" hypothesis (though I'd say "trial-worthy"). The Tetrast (talk) 15:34, 10 August 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 16:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

Magnani introduces a couple of dichotomies within the concept of abduction. Being a philosopher he does not pin himself down to a definition, but I think Aliseda tried to provide some. These dichotomies may be helpful in clarifying the concept. I have to admit my main interest is in his joint articles with Dossena, where they explore optical abduction in the world of the hyperreals. I added the title of the article to his page here. Tkuvho (talk) 16:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like Mangani's work could have a whole paragraph of its own (I mean, look at that big paragraph on Alfred Gell). I don't suppose you'd like to write it? (I can't write it!) Getting into further dichotomies sounds like a lot for the intro section. How about in the "Applications" section, though insofar as Mangani is also a philosopher, it's hard to pigeonhole him. But there's stuff on philosophy of science in the "Applications section" too, so it's not all unphilosophical. If something from Mangani is in the intro section, then you can make it also refer to the "Applications" section or wherever in the wiki the Mangani paragraph ends up for more info. Maybe a section on philosophy (beyond 'logical critic') about abduction. The Tetrast (talk) 16:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

The more I think about it, the more it seems that there should be a section on philosophy about abduction, or on abduction in inquiry, or whatever, somewhere before the "Applications" section, maybe before the "History of the concept" section too. This would be good for the "big-picture" viewpoint which Mangani has, and which the wiki could use more of. The Tetrast (talk) 16:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

Sounds like a good idea. One would have to understand his dichotomies first :) Tkuvho (talk) 17:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Please give it a try! If you're saying that you're not sure that you understand them, your efforts might make me able to help in cases where I'd have to do a lot more work on my own - it'd point me in the right directions or something. I flounder in the longer formulas, but I'm not terrible with the more general philosophical aspects. You could do it on your talk page. The Tetrast (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

Or at least tell me what the couple of dichotomies are. Aliseda mentions a dichotomy. Is that one of them? The Tetrast (talk) 17:30, 10 August 2010 (UTC).

Alright, here it goes. One basic dichotomy is theoretical abduction versus model-based abduction. If I were to rewrite Magnani's texts, I would replace theoretical abduction by reflective/cogitative abduction; and model-based abduction, by physical object-assisted abduction (here the physical object may be quite abstract, such as a diagram). Thus, Kepler's discovery of elliptic orbits would be a theoretical abduction, whereas diagrams of infinitesimal microscopes and infinite telescopes over the hyperreals are a model-based abduction. Tkuvho (talk) 13:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Thomas Kuhn, in his The Copernican revolution, has developed interesting ideas about the origin of elliptic orbits, without ever mentioning abduction. I would not mind calling it thus, though, although it would not increase my understanding.WMdeMuynck (talk) 17:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that, but the Kepler example has been mentioned in the abduction literature, as Aliseda points out. Tkuvho (talk) 20:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Circa 1896 (Collected Papers v. 1, paragraph 74), Peirce said, "Kepler shows his keen logical sense in detailing the whole process by which he finally arrived at the true orbit. This is the greatest piece of Retroductive reasoning ever performed." (Retroductive = Abductive). So the idea of Kepler's reasoning as being abductive got an early start.
Thanks for the dichotomy, Tkuvho. The hyperreals example is a bit over my head (though I should have guessed that 'microscopes' and 'telescopes' would get involved since Robinson introduced 'galaxies'). I have a notion of a dichotomy between model-based reasoning (reasoning through what causes/facilitates/affects etc. what) and, loosely speaking, 'diagnostic' reasoning (reasoning through what shows/proves/suggests etc. what). Is Magnani's dichotomy an abductive version of that? The Tetrast (talk) 20:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC).

Actually, I see I already got confused with the types of abductions according to Magnani. He contrasts sentential abduction and model-based abduction, both of which are varieties of theoretical abduction. He also has another type of abduction action-based abduction. Tkuvho (talk) 11:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Pearl

Can someone contribute a discussion of Judea Pearl's work on abduction, for example from his book Causality Mrdavenport (talk) 07:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Oftenest

I object to the sentence, "Oftenest even a well-prepared mind guesses wrong," because: A) It makes no sense to me and, B) It doesn't seem to be grammatically correct. Assuming that the meaning is, "Even a well-prepared mind often guesses wrong" I propose that the sentence be amended. I also note that the word "oftenest" doesn't appear on the page that is used as a reference for that statement.190.235.228.1 (talk) 16:47, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Amended. The word "oftener" doesn't appear there either but in neither case was it quoted as being so. What is there is "well-prepared". An added point is that Peirce did not think that a correct guess is due solely to inborn instinct. The quote is: "But is it a fact that man possesses this magical faculty? Not, I reply, to the extent of guessing right the first time, nor perhaps the second; but that the well-prepared mind has wonderfully soon guessed each secret of nature is historical truth." If you're using the InteLex CD-ROM, search on "well prepared" (with the quotes), not "well-prepared". I don't know why the hyphen messes the search up. The Tetrast (talk) 17:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC).

Deduction Example

"For example, given that all bachelors are unmarried males, and given that this person is a bachelor, it can be deduced that this person is an unmarried male."

This is a terrible example of deductive reasoning. Because the exact definition of bachelor is "an unmarried male", nothing at all is deduced, facts are only restated. The conclusion is just a restatement of the 2nd part of the premise, adding nothing new at all, so it's lacking the characteristic inference.

Something abstract might be better? Or a joke: If all politicians are liars, and Ted is a politician, then Ted is a liar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmneeley (talk • contribs) 17:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Abductive reasoning/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==Rated as stub== Dictionary-short article needs references/citations (previously tagged). Hotfeba 23:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Substituted at 20:12, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Probabilistic abduction

How is the term $p(y{\overline {\|}}x)=p(x)\left({\frac {a(y)p(x|y)}{a(y)p(x|y)+a({\overline {y}})p(x|{\overline {y}})}}\right)+p({\overline {x}})\left({\frac {a(y)p({\overline {x}}|y)}{a(y)p({\overline {x}}|y)+a({\overline {y}})p({\overline {x}}|{\overline {y}})}}\right)$ mathematically different from $p(y{\overline {\|}}x)=a(y)\left(p(x|y)+p({\overline {x}}|y)\right)$? Using current notation and argumentation they are equivalent, and the artificial expansion of the marginals does not convey clarity or usefulness of any kind. The difference (if any) between $p$ and $a$ could also be explained. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.235.53.84 (talk) 02:29, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Also on Probabilistic abduction

Hello, in the sentence 'where "||" denotes conditional deduction', this is not understandable: in the right-hand side of the immediately preceding equation, substituting the conditional probabilities by their standard definitions, the multipliers $p(x)$ and $p({\overline {x}})$ cancel off, and by complementarity of $x$ and ${\overline {x}}$, the expression boils down to $p(y)$, leaving one with no clue of what $p(y\|x)$ actually is. Also, just next, the "base rate" is mentioned but not defined nor provided with a link to some other Wikipedia page explaining what it is (this is also, essentially, the same question as above asking the editor to clarify the difference between $p$ and $a$). Thanks for your attention. 83.63.244.118 (talk) 18:04, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Induction vs. Abduction

I read and re-read this article and still do not get the distinction between "induction" and "abduction". Though the authors presented a very learned discussion with careful symbolic logic to support their definition of "abduction", they made nary a mention of "induction", which it seems to me they were defining. 3,568 is my answer to the angel question, by the way, but only on Sunday and other certain assumptions (assumptions of certainty) for uncertain things, i.e. definitions that constrain alternative interpretations. There may be a deep and meaningful distinction to be had between abduction and induction, but in my dense fog of ignorance, I can not see it. From that fog comes another popular saying "mountains out of molehills" to which I would add the corollary, molehills out of mountains (cp. Matthew 23:24, though I am not a Christian except by culture). The issue is how, from specific instances, we are able to draw and validate general statements, hypotheses, theories, or, as the authors cite other authors, "guesses". Patterns, of course, and observations of patterns, repeatable (helpful), recorded (helpful), and discussed with others (also helpful). The help, which we and I often first react to as an attack, attempts to uncover our inevitable social, political, religious, logical, and mathematical biases. (cp. Lao Tzu for a poetic advance of the "bias" hypothesis, to give ecumenicalism its due) "We", and I as but a lay person, have known this for a long time and heretofore called it, by convention, "induction". Science proceeds by making distinctions where none existed before, and I applaud the authors for their copious contribution, though I must learn more before understanding it. Ssinnock (talk) 21:41, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's my amateur's crack at induction vs. abduction. Induction involves constructing a rule that a implies b from numerous examples. (Actually, there is a rigorous mathematical method of proof called induction.) Abduction is an inverse application of the rule a implies b: one infers that given b, a was the probable cause. Induction is as good as the data that supports the rule. Abduction is only as good as the uniqueness of the cause, a. For example, there could be two rules constructed from induction: a causes c, and b causes c. Both these inductive rules could be correct, and either could be applied inductively to show that if a or b occurs, then c occurs. Observing c, the abduction that a was the cause, is only probabalistic, since the cause might have been b. Wcmead3 (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

As far as I see it, there is a representation which allows to clarify everything. Basically, there is theories and observations, for instance we can observe that something is at a given position, or acting in some ways, but we cannot observe a theory, like the laws of nature, which we can only build based on evidences we have. Nevertheless, both are related, such that the theory is built to represent the observations, so if an observation $o$ is followed by an observation $o'$, we can establish a theory (or rule) $t$ which supports it. More formally, the theory is established to tell that $o\Rightarrow o'$ ($o$ physically leads to $o$), what we can rewrite as $t\Rightarrow (o\Rightarrow o')$ ($t$ logically represents the observations). Knowing that $a\Rightarrow b$ is equivalent to $\neg a\lor b$, it can be rewritten as $t\land o\Rightarrow o'$, which gives us a form where we can identify the premises ($t$ and $o$) and the consequences ($o'$). The point here is the following:

• given $t$ and $o$, we deduce $o'$ (deduction = predict the future)
• given $t$ and $o'$, we abduce $o$ (abduction = expect the past)
• given $o$ and $o'$, we induce $t$ (induction = build a theory)

Consequently, deduction is assumed to be certain, which is true as long as the theory is correct. Abduction is physically uncertain, because even if the theory is correct, other theories could be used, leading to identify another $o$. Induction is logically uncertain because additional information may provide us counter evidences, making the theory incorrect and leading us to induce something else. Once we have well understood that, it seems clear that the difficulty to differentiate abduction from induction comes from the fact that both of them are given the conclusion ($o'$) and part of the premises ($o$ or $t$) and aim at retrieving the missing premises (resp. $t$ or $o$) with some uncertainty (resp. logical or physical). Unless we differentiate premises as observation and theory/concrete and abstract/empirical and theoretical/..., we cannot tell the difference between the two. Matthieu Vergne (talk) 13:43, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Merged duplicated history

I merged the duplicate history sections and moved it into one section at the top. Most information in the first history section was already in the second, so only a little bit of information needed to be added. Here was the article before the merge: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abductive_reasoning&oldid=750726565 IWillBuildTheRoads (talk) 22:11, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Mediawiki-Bug?

I get this with 3 different Browsers and both on Win7 and Win10:
"Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "/mathoid/local/v1/":): a_{1}"
See: http://beginnersmind.de/pics/scrshots/Possible-Mediawiki-Bug.png
BeginnersMind (talk) 08:41, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I could fix it by changing blank space. Perhaps the cache refreshing did fix the problem. BeginnersMind (talk) 22:03, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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Readability.

Hi. The readability of this article is rather abstruse from a naive lay person's perspective, and therefore obtuse to them. This has been a major problem since Wikipedia got in the experts to edit things. If the explanation is above the level of New Scientist magazine, it is too complex. Articles need to be written so the lay person without defect of intelligence, may gain understanding of all which is said in simple terms, not written as something a trained person would understand, such as an university undergrad. This is the problem with educated writing, to assume what is simple and previously understood by the writer is simple to understand for the reader (who has none of these advantages). This would ultimately require; overview, simple summary, detailed and advanced understanding sections to draw the avid reader up in understanding as they read and worked through each.

Examples:

More specifically. It would he better to apply abductive, deductive and inductive reasoning to the same common examples, to illustrate the different ways of viewing each mechanism. It would be good to have these three perspectives of each example and at least three examples. Such examples would have to be formed to contrast the different perspectives to promote understanding the differences between the types of reasoning.

Language:

The language needs to be less technical and more explanatory. A linked technical word put in brackets after the explanation could be used. for example "(called X)" for people to explore.

Discriminatory:

I say the above because there is a large variability of cognitive ability in the community, but also, people like myself suffering medical cognitive decline, are progressively majorally disadvantaged in researching subjects by the present way of writing and separating out articles. For example, like health/medical pages separating out condition from pathogen pages while eliminating advanced (preliminary and alternative) research information one might pursue to get away from the confirmation biases on the page, and find deviations related to genetic physiology differences, in these examples, and new directions of understanding. These had dried up to be replaced by formalised views which were unproven as far as being the limit of understand. A form of confirmation biase.

I would appreciate if somebody could bring this here to the wider attention of the Wikipedia community standards. I have only done a talk/issues submission once or twice before in post format and this new talk system is very abstruse in itself. The system is a maze. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.197.32.248 (talk) 13:43, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Probabilistic abduction

An IP editor removed the section "Probabilistic abduction" with this edit. I am not restoring it only because it is an WP:UNSOURCED section. I do not have the time now and probably never will to properly source this section, but a quick google search shows that probabilistic abduction is a thing. If someone else wishes to restore this, keep in mind it must be sourced or the next time someone does not like it they can remove it and it will go unchallenged. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 19:11, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Induction & deduction

WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM This encyclopedia accepts the premise of enumerative induction that the more editors who agree on the content of an article, the more accurate and useful that content. Induction is practiced on every TALK page. Editors generalize from a few observations, and deduce concrete conclusions from their generalizations.

WP contains 4 repetitive and fragmentary articles on induction: [Inductive reasoning], [The problem of induction]; [New riddle of induction],[Inductivism]. I would like to rectify this chaotic situation by rewriting and merging these 4 articles, retaining only the reasoning title. I ask you—a participant in relevant TALK pages—to judge my rewrite/merge project: SHOULD I PROCEED? Below is the current proposed outline:

Definitions. Induction generalizes conceptually; deduction concludes empirically.

[David Hume], philosopher condemner.

[Pierre Duhem], physicist user.

[John Dewey], philosopher explainer.

[Bertrand Russell], philosopher condemner.

[Karl Popper], philosopher condemner.

Steven Sloman, psychologist explainer.

Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., psychologist user.

[Daniel Kahneman], psychologist user.

[Richard H. Thaler] economist user.

Please respond at Talk:Inductive reasoning. TBR-qed (talk) 23:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

To clarify,he wants to merge Inductive reasoning, The problem of induction, New riddle of induction, and Inductivism. The merge discussion is Talk:Inductive reasoning#WP DEPENDS ON INDUCTION & DEDUCTION. THEIR MEANING SHOULD BE FIRM.. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 08:49, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Abduction and imputation

Peirce's idea of "abduction" has been likened to Max Weber's idea of "imputation (Zurechnung)", applied in historical and sociological explanation:

• Koshul, Basit Bilal (2005). The Postmodern Significance of Max Weber’s Legacy: Disenchanting Disenchantment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-6784-9.
• Koshul, Basit Bilal (2014). Max Weber and Charles Peirce: at the Crossroads of Sciences, Philosophy, and Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498550840.

Errantius (talk) 22:57, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Errantius: There is a huge body of literature on abductive reasoning in social science, including hundreds of publications that mention Weber, so I don't see what is special about the two books cited above. Furthermore, in the two books cited above the author credits the comparison you mentioned to Toby Huff's 1984 book Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social Sciences, published considerably earlier than the two books cited above. Biogeographist (talk) 03:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

In the first book, Koshul has a quotation from Huff as an "observation ... made in passing" that "contains an insight that needs to be explored in greater depth" (p 162). Presumably that is what we have both been looking at. Koshul's second book (which I haven't seen) seems to be that exploration. My impression was that Huff and maybe others had noticed the similarity but had not examined it closely. If Koshul hasn't read widely enough, too bad for him—and likewise mea culpa. Errantius (talk) 03:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

This might have a place in a subsection of Abductive reasoning § Applications devoted to social science. But in my opinion such a section, if it were to be written, should be broader in scope than just the Peirce/Weber comparison. Otherwise we would have a repeat of the somewhat bizarre Abductive reasoning § Anthropology section, which is really about Gell's Art and Agency, not about anthropology in general as the heading implies. Biogeographist (talk) 04:14, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Errantius (talk) 04:44, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

consistent examples

One way to make this page more approachable would be to use a consistent example in section 1 instead of bouncing around between wikis, swans, and billiards -- MW does this nicely. Let's settle on swans.

deduction

given that swans are a type of bird, and birds lay eggs, we deduce that swans lays eggs

induction

given that all the swans we see are white, we induce that all swans are white

abduction

give that swan is in our fenced yard, and we know swans fly, we abduce the swan flew into our yard

Thanks! -Reagle (talk) 21:47, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Improper use of explanatory notes

An IP editor recently moved a number of quotations into explanatory notes, and I reverted those edits because it is not the proper use of explanatory notes. As I said in my edit summaries, for example, Campos 2011 and Walton 2001 are just references that support the claim, not explanatory notes. And putting other quotations in explanatory footnotes with no indication (via quotation marks or block quotations) that they are quotations is also unacceptable because it is essentially plagiarism of the sources, since the lack of indication of quotation confuses Wikipedia's voice with the voices of the quoted authors. Help:Explanatory notes shows the proper usage of explanatory notes. Unfortunately there were other unrelated changes in the reverted edits, but it is extremely tedious work to individually undo all of the improper explanatory notes, and anyone who makes such a large quantity of changes should take care to do it correctly. Biogeographist (talk) 18:07, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Add reference to uberty

Peirce seems to have proposed the mode of abductive reasoning for practical reasons related to "economy of research". Not all hypotheses are equally worthy of being subjected to the costly effort of falsification -- empirically, or otherwise.

A key term proposed by him to explain this basis is "uberty" -- the expected fertility and pragmatic value of a hypothesis. This concept has been taken up by a few scholars and seems to be gaining support via connections to the Free Energy Principle.

Some preliminary content around uberty can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Uberty

I would be happy to contribute a small subsection and link to this page, based on your feedback.

--Bearf0x42 (talk) 23:28, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Does not seem to be in current use. See Google Books Ngram Viewer]. Looks like its use increased toward the end of the last century and then died out. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems to be ready for a comeback with the Free Energy Principle. Here's a quote from a September 2021 paper by a leading researcher in Semiotics: ... The choice is between those that carry what Peirce terms the ‘uberty’ of hypotheses and those that do not. In brief, FEP’s account of prediction error minimisation, thick depth of its generative models, and policymaking have vindicated Peirce’s logic of scientific inquiry sketched over a century ago. REF: Beni, Majid D.; Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko (2021-09-10). "Aligning the free-energy principle with Peirce's logic of science and economy of research". European Journal for Philosophy of Science. 11 (3): 94. https://doi.org/h10.1007/s13194-021-00408-y

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, is one of the leading Semiotics researchers around. He and his coauthor clearly describe the connections between the best unifying brain theory (Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle) and Pierce's notions of uberty: The desirable property to be found in a method of hypothesis generation.

And here's another title of a paper a legal research journal from 1993: On Uberty: Legal Reasoning by Analogy and Peirce's Theory of Abduction, Willamette Law Review, Vol. 29, p. 191, 1993

--Bearf0x42 (talk) 13:55, 2 February 2022 (UTC)