Abduction and Estimation in Animals

One of the most pressing issues in understanding abduction is whether it is an instinct or an inference. For many commentators find it paradoxical that new ideas are products of an instinct and products of an inference at the same time. Fortunately, Lorenzo Magnani’s recent discussion of animal abduction sheds light on both instinctual and inferential character of Peircean abduction. But, exactly for what reasons are Peirce and Magnani so convinced that animal abduction can provide us with a novel perspective? Inspired by Peirce’s and Magnani’s discussions of animal abduction, I propose to compare Peirce’s and Magnani’s views of animal abduction with the estimative power of non-human animals and humans, which was one of the internal senses in medieval psychology.     

Problems with Peirce's Concept of Abduction

Abductive reasoning takes place in forming``hypotheses' in order to explain ``facts.' Thus, theconcept of abduction promises an understanding ofcreativity in science and learning. It raises,however, also a lot of problems. Some of them will bediscussed in this paper. After analyzing thedifference between induction and abduction (1), Ishall discuss Peirce's claim that there is a ``logic'of abduction (2). The thesis is that this claim can beunderstood, if we make a clear distinction betweeninferential elements and perceptive elements ofabductive reasoning. For Peirce, the creative act offorming explanatory hypotheses and the emergence of``new ideas' belongs exclusively to the perceptive sideof abduction. Thus, it is necessary to study the roleof perception in abductive reasoning (3). A furtherproblem is the question whether there is arelationship between abduction and Peirce's concept of``theorematic reasoning' in mathematics (4). Both formsof reasoning could be connected, because both arebased on perception. The last problem concerns therole of instincts in explaining the success ofabductive reasoning in science, and the questionwhether the concept of instinct might be replaced bymethods of inquiry (5).     

How to Get It. Diagrammatic Reasoning as a Tool of Knowledge Development and its Pragmatic Dimension

Discussions concerning belief revision, theorydevelopment, and ``creativity' in philosophy andAI, reveal a growing interest in Peirce'sconcept of abduction. Peirce introducedabduction in an attempt to providetheoretical dignity and clarification to thedifficult problem of knowledge generation. Hewrote that ``An Abduction is Originary inrespect to being the only kind of argumentwhich starts a new idea' (Peirce, CP 2.26).These discussions, however, led to considerabledebates about the precise way in which Peirce'sabduction can be used to explain knowledgegeneration (cf. Magnani, 1999; Hoffmann, 1999).The crucial question is that of understandinghow we can get the new elements capableof enlarging our theories. Under thesecircumstances, it might be helpful to step outof the entanglement and reconsider the basis ofthe problem that originally triggered Peirce'sinterest in abduction. This will lead us toanother Peircean concept, that of ``diagrammaticreasoning,' which I discuss here in the contextof his ``pragmatism.' In this way, I hope toreach a better understanding of thecontribution of ``abduction' to the knowledgegeneration process.     

Understanding Natural Science Based on Abductive Inference: Continental Drift

This study aims to understand scientific inference for the evolutionary procedure of Continental Drift based on abductive inference, which is important for creative inference and scientific discovery during problem solving. We present the following two research problems: (1) we suggest a scientific inference procedure as well as various strategies and a criterion for choosing hypotheses over other competing or previous hypotheses; aspects of this procedure include puzzling observation, abduction, retroduction, updating, deduction, induction, and recycle; and (2) we analyze the “theory of continental drift” discovery, called the Earth science revolution, using our multistage inference procedure. Wegener’s Continental Drift hypothesis had an impact comparable to the revolution caused by Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology. Finally, the suggested inquiry inference model can provide us with a more consistent view of science and promote a deeper understanding of scientific concepts.     

Model-Based and Manipulative Abduction in Science

What I call theoretical abduction (sentential and model-based)certainly illustrates much of what is important in abductive reasoning, especially the objective of selecting and creating a set of hypotheses that are able to dispense good (preferred) explanations of data, but fails to account for many cases of explanation occurring in science or in everyday reasoning when the exploitation of the environment is crucial. The concept of manipulative abduction is devoted to capture the role of action in many interesting situations: action provides otherwise unavailable information that enables the agent to solve problems by starting and performing a suitable abductive process of generation or selection of hypotheses. Many external things, usually inert from the epistemological point of view, can be transformed into what I callepistemic mediators, which are illustrated in the last part of the paper, together with an analysis of the related notions of ``perceptual and inceptual rehearsal' and of ``external representation'.     

Simulation Methods for an Abductive System in Science

We argue that abduction does not work in isolation from other inference mechanisms and illustrate this through an inference scheme designed to evaluate multiple hypotheses. We use game theory to relate the abductive system to actions that produce new information. To enable evaluation of the implications of this approach we have implemented the procedures used to calculate the impact of new information in a computer model. Experiments with this model display a number of features of collective belief-revision leading to consensus-formation, such as the influence of bias and prejudice. The scheme of inferential calculations invokes a Peircian concept of ‘belief’ as the propensity to choose a particular course of action.

Withdrawing Unfalsifiable Hypotheses

There has been little research into the weak kindsof negating hypotheses. Hypotheses may be unfalsifiable. In this case it is impossible tofind a contradiction in some area of the conceptualsystems in which they are incorporated.Notwithstanding this fact, it is sometimes necessaryto construct ways of rejecting the unfalsifiablehypothesis at hand by resorting to some external forms of negation, external because wewant to avoid any arbitrary and subjectiveelimination, which would be rationally orepistemologically unjustified. I will consider akind of ``weak' (unfalsifiable) hypotheses that arehard to negate and the ways for making it easy. Inthese cases the subject can ``rationally' decide towithdraw his hypotheses even in contexts where it is``impossible' to find ``explicit' contradictions: theuse of negation as failure (an interestingtechnique for negating hypotheses and accessing newones suggested by artificial intelligence) isilluminating. I plan to explore whether this kind ofnegation can be employed to model hypothesiswithdrawal in Poincaré's conventionalism of theprinciples of physics and in Freudian analyticreasoning.     

清末黄宗宪的《容圆七术》初探

清末数学家黄宗宪在<容圆七术>中,对中国传统数学的容圆问题从几个方面做了推广,特别是用西方数学的圆锥曲线、轨迹方法及逻辑推理等知识解决新的容圆问题,其中不乏颇具新意的创见和成果.我们由此也可看到我国清末东、西方数学交融时期的许多现象.     

Fidelity-Commensurability Tradeoff in Joint Embedding of Disparate Dissimilarities

In various data settings, it is necessary to compare observations from disparate data sources. We assume the data is in the dissimilarity representation (P?kalska and Duin, 2005) and investigate a joint embedding method (Priebe et al., 2013) that results in a commensurate representation of disparate dissimilarities. We further assume that there are “matched” observations from different conditions which can be considered to be highly similar, for the sake of inference. The joint embedding results in the joint optimization of fidelity (preservation of within-condition dissimilarities) and commensurability (preservation of between-condition dissimilarities between matched observations). We show that the tradeoff between these two criteria can be made explicit using weighted raw stress as the objective function for multidimensional scaling. In our investigations, we use a weight parameter, w, to control the tradeoff, and choose match detection as the inference task. Our results show weights that are optimal (with respect to the inference task) are different than equal weights for commensurability and fidelity and the proposed weighted embedding scheme provides significant improvements in statistical power.     

“Who” is a “Topical Measuring” Postphenomenologist and How Does One Get That Way?

Gert Goeminne’s paper is primarily concerned with “the politics of sustainable technology,” but for good reasons he does not start with this topic. He knows that technology studies as he conceives it must clear a space for itself in a philosophical atmosphere that discourages its pursuit. He therefore begins with a critique of this objectivistic and technocratically defined atmosphere, before moving on to embrace a postphenomenology of technological multistabilities, and then further to introduce what he calls (in an adaptation of Rudolf Boehm) the “topical measure” of technoscientific life. The problem I raise is not about Goeminne’s aims, with which I mostly agree, but with his presentation of how to achieve them. I argue that if one were actually to follow his advice—that is, start with critique, move on to postphenomenology, and end with “political” evaluation of technoscientific life, the project would be doomed to failure. For in our world, no one Understands this pluralizing vision. According to the understanding we actually live through and speak from, some of postphenomenology’s multiple disclosures already arrive in our experience with significantly greater ontological power than others, and sincerity about topical measure notwithstanding, the very identification of something as an interest or “value,” especially if it allegedly comes from a “layperson,” already condemns it to secondary status.     

最佳说明推理与溯因推理

最佳说明推理源于溯因推理,在一种推理过程中同时对科学假说的产生和评价作出了说明。文章考察了最佳说明推理的基本概念;从新假说产生即科学发现的视角,重构了皮尔士的溯因模型;在此基础上,比较了最佳说明推理与溯因推理的异同,比较性地评价了两者作为科学探究模式的优劣;最后,尝试性地得出几条结论。     

Coherence of Our Best Scientific Theories

Putnam in Realism in mathematics and Elsewhere, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1975) infers from the success of a scientific theory to its approximate truth and the reference of its key term. Laudan in Philos Sci 49:19–49 (1981) objects that some past theories were successful, and yet their key terms did not refer, so they were not even approximately true. Kitcher in The advancement of science, Oxford University Press, New York (1993) replies that the past theories are approximately true because their working posits are true, although their idle posits are false. In contrast, I argue that successful theories which cohere with each other are approximately true, and that their key terms refer. My position is immune to Laudan’s counterexamples to Putnam’s inference and yields a solution to a problem with Kitcher’s position.     

Abductive Reasoning,Interpretation and Collaborative Processes

In this paper we want to examine how the mutual understanding of speakers is reached during a conversation through collaborative processes, and what role is played by abductive inference (in the Peircean sense) in these processes. We do this by bringing together contributions coming from a variety of disciplines, such as logic, philosophy of language and psychology. When speakers are engaged in a conversation, they refer to a supposed common ground: every participant ascribes to the others some knowledge, belief, opinion etc. on which to rely in order to reach mutual understanding. As the conversation unfolds, this common ground is continually corrected and reshaped by the interchanges. An abductive reasoning takes place, in a collaborative setting, in order to build new possible theories about the common ground. In reconstructing this process through the use of a working example, we argue that the integration of a collaborative perspective within the Peircean theory of abduction can help to solve some of the drawbacks that the critics of the latter have outlined, for example its permissivity and non generativity.

论推理的有效性

推理或推理形式的有效性是逻辑学的核心概念.由于现代逻辑的形式系统化,推理形式的不同类型构成了不同的逻辑系统,有效性概念相对于不同的系统而言,具有相对性和层次性.同时,系统内的有效性又分为语形有效性与语义有效性,它们分别可由形式证明的方法和语义解释的方法加以判定.     

The Differential Method and the Causal Incompleteness of Programming Theory in Molecular Biology

The “DNA is a program” metaphor is still widely used in Molecular Biology and its popularization. There are good historical reasons for the use of such a metaphor or theoretical model. Yet we argue that both the metaphor and the model are essentially inadequate also from the point of view of Physics and Computer Science. Relevant work has already been done, in Biology, criticizing the programming paradigm. We will refer to empirical evidence and theoretical writings in Biology, although our arguments will be mostly based on a comparison with the use of differential methods (in Molecular Biology: a mutation or alike is observed or induced and its phenotypic consequences are observed) as applied in Computer Science and in Physics, where this fundamental tool for empirical investigation originated and acquired a well-justified status. In particular, as we will argue, the programming paradigm is not theoretically sound as a causal(as in Physics) or deductive(as in Programming) framework for relating the genome to the phenotype, in contrast to the physicalist and computational grounds that this paradigm claims to propose.

词与短语的模糊界限分析

词与短语的模糊界限表现为两种现象:某一语言形式不是典型的词或短语,出现了“中间地带”;在发展过程中,语言形式在词与短语间变化,转化期间的跨越界限是模糊的。从结构讲,词(主要是复合词)和短语的概念结构有共同之处,都有核心成分与边缘成分,但也有不同之处。可从概念的三个主要功能入手,分析词和短语在归类、推理和叠加方面的不同表现,来确定某一语言成分的属性。     

Displacing Epistemology: Being in the Midst of Technoscientific Practice

Interest the Erklären?CVerstehen debate is usually interpreted as primarily epistemological. By raising the possibility that there are fundamentally different methods for fundamentally different types of science, the debate puts into play all the standard issues??that is, issues concerning scientific explanation and justification, the unity and diversity of scientific disciplines, the reality of their subject matter, the accessibility of various subject matters to research, and so on. In this paper, however, I do not focus on any of these specific issues. I start instead from the fact that the very existence of the debate itself is an issue; in fact, it poses a philosophical problem that almost everyone but the hardest line logical empiricists has come to realize cannot be resolved epistemologically. In my view, however, that it cannot be resolved ontologically, either. I think the problem is at bottom hermeneutical, and its resolution requires that we focus first, not on the objects of science or the methods of studying them, but on the character of the philosophical orientation assumed by those who would try to resolve it. In this paper, I explain why I think this is so by analyzing (1) Dilthey??s contribution to the original debate, (2) Husserl??s reaction to Dilthey, and (3) Heidegger??s critical evaluation of both. This line of philosophical development??this movement of self-understanding from critiques of objectivism to hermeneutical phenomenology??is of course already a central feature of much work in continental philosophy of science. In my conclusion, however, I argue for the less well-established??even if apparently approved??idea that it ought to be a central feature of technoscience studies as well.