abduction and casuistry

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abduction and casuistry

Nick Thompson

Hi, all,

 

Once you become aware of abduction as a mental operation, you start to see it everywhere.  I saw it in Malcom Gladwell’s three part series (  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-standard-case/id1119389968?i=1000444756825; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-rocks-taxonomy/id1119389968?i=1000445285031; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/descend-into-the-particular/id1119389968?i=1000445850049)on Jesuitical casuistry.  I always thought of casuistry as a form of sophistry or hypocrisy, but apparently it began is as method for incorporating the new experiences that global travel brought to the 16th Century Catholic World.  As an inquiry into the identity of a particular case, it looks a lot like abduction to me.  Because many of you live in NM, you may take particular interest in the third episode, which presents an analysis of the Angelo Navarro shooting by Albuquerque police. Was it case of a violent man charging the police with a weapon?  Or was it the case of a racially motivated firing squad of unarmed men by heavily armed police?  Or, ….? You would get a lot of benefit from just listening to this one episode, but to fully understand its philosophical impact, you need the other two to set the context.

 

Enjoy.  Or not.

 

Nick   

 

P. S., Does anybody know anything about the relation between Peirce and the Jesuits? 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 


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Re: abduction and casuistry

gepr
Admittedly without more context -- and in my ignorance, my first reaction is to accuse you (and Gladwell) of a category error. The criminologist doesn't sound like he's advocating anything like casuistry (or what I'd argue is the inferential purpose of abduction). He seems to be arguing for something closer to non- or anti-deontological reasoning ... The only rule is that there are no rules.

It's reasonable, of course, for a self-described monist to hunt for the Grand Unified Rule of Reality, the master equation that need only have all it's many (even countably infinite) variables *bound* to values for the answer to bubble forth like from an oracle. But people like me might react: "Of COURSE, you have to look at the particulars of every situation because *any* predicate you infer (by hook or crook) will always be wrong." This is why I'm a supporter of jury trials, as I've argued here in the past.

Is the criminologist truly engaging in an inferential process by which he builds rules to (completely, perfectly) shrink-wrap multiple particulars?  Or is the criminologist more of a pluralist, open to the failure of any given predicate he may infer?

On 8/20/19 12:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Once you become aware of abduction as a mental operation, you start to see it everywhere.  I saw it in Malcom Gladwell’s three part series (  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-standard-case/id1119389968?i=1000444756825; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-rocks-taxonomy/id1119389968?i=1000445285031; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/descend-into-the-particular/id1119389968?i=1000445850049)on Jesuitical casuistry.  I always thought of casuistry as a form of sophistry or hypocrisy, but apparently it began is as method for incorporating the new experiences that global travel brought to the 16^th Century Catholic World.  As an inquiry into the identity of a particular case, it looks a lot like abduction to me.  Because many of you live in NM, you may take particular interest in the third episode, which presents an analysis of the Angelo Navarro shooting by Albuquerque police. Was it case of a violent man charging the police with a weapon?  Or was it the case of a
> racially motivated firing squad of unarmed men by heavily armed police?  Or, ….? You would get a lot of benefit from just listening to this one episode, but to fully understand its philosophical impact, you need the other two to set the context.

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Prof David West
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
perhaps relevant to Nicks question:

1. a secondary definition of casuistry is "resolving moral problems by application of theoretical rules."

2. A Jesuit practice, "reform of the individual," seems to incorporate a sense (not definition) of "individual" consistent with Duns Scotus' concept of haecciety and, because Peirce used that term in his work, to explain what he meant by the individual, there seems to be a thread to medieval Catholicism.

3. Jesuit values, e.g. "Respect For The World, Its History And Mystery" and especially, Learning From Experience lead to philosophical thought that is not contradictory to Peircian notions of experience.

4. But, Jesuits are dualists, not in the objective world / experience of it sense (there they seem to be quite close to Peirce) but in the sense that TRUTH  can come, not just from experience (and science) but from revelation - the direct word of God.

5. Jesuits, among many others (Galileo), often found themselves at odds with the Church over the issue of whether or not a thing could be true in philosophy but not in theology, or vice versa. The Jesuits focused on truth in philosophy and their method for identifying that truth would, again, not be incompatible with Peirce. So only point four would be contrary to Peirce's ideas.

6. No intellectual lineage is evident from any Jesuit philosopher and Charles Sanders.

davew


On Tue, Aug 20, 2019, at 9:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi, all,

 

Once you become aware of abduction as a mental operation, you start to see it everywhere.  I saw it in Malcom Gladwell’s three part series (  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-standard-case/id1119389968?i=1000444756825; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-rocks-taxonomy/id1119389968?i=1000445285031; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/descend-into-the-particular/id1119389968?i=1000445850049)on Jesuitical casuistry.  I always thought of casuistry as a form of sophistry or hypocrisy, but apparently it began is as method for incorporating the new experiences that global travel brought to the 16th Century Catholic World.  As an inquiry into the identity of a particular case, it looks a lot like abduction to me.  Because many of you live in NM, you may take particular interest in the third episode, which presents an analysis of the Angelo Navarro shooting by Albuquerque police. Was it case of a violent man charging the police with a weapon?  Or was it the case of a racially motivated firing squad of unarmed men by heavily armed police?  Or, ….? You would get a lot of benefit from just listening to this one episode, but to fully understand its philosophical impact, you need the other two to set the context.

 

Enjoy.  Or not.

 

Nick   

 

P. S., Does anybody know anything about the relation between Peirce and the Jesuits? 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

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Re: abduction and casuistry

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by gepr

Hi, Glen,

 

Almost missed this in the email litter.  Glad I didn't.  Please see larding, below.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 6:06 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

 

Admittedly without more context -- and in my ignorance, my first reaction is to accuse you (and Gladwell) of a category error.

[NST==>Ach! Hoist by my own petard, again! <==nst]

The criminologist doesn't sound like he's advocating anything like casuistry (or what I'd argue is the inferential purpose of abduction). He seems to be arguing for something closer to non- or anti-deontological reasoning ... The only rule is that there are no rules.

[NST==>Yes, I wondered about that.  Can a casuist be Rigorous.  Now, Glen, do you and I agree, or disagree, on the value of [and also on the perils of] rigor.  I think of rigor as something one tries out to see where one arrives.  One does something forced, automatic and counter intuitive for a while (think mathematics) in the hope that when one is done, the rigor delivers one to a more integrated, intelligible, articulable state of thought.  So, if casuistry is incapable of rigor, I probably don’t want any part of it. I am less certain about “meta-rigor”.  Do I have any fixed rules for when rigor “should” come into play.   Do you agree with any of that? <==nst]

 

It's reasonable, of course, for a self-described monist

[NST==>Ach!  No!  See below!<==nst]

 to hunt for the Grand Unified Rule of Reality, the master equation that need only have all it's many (even countably infinite) variables *bound* to values for the answer to bubble forth like from an oracle.

[NST==>Hang on thar, big fella!  Are you confusing monism with monotheism?  There is nothing ethical about monism.  It is simply the position that we will think more clearly if we postulate only one kind of stuff (“experience”, in my case) and deriving all other “stuffs” from organizations of that single basic stuff.  <==nst]

 But people like me might react: "Of COURSE, you have to look at the particulars of every situation because *any* predicate you infer (by hook or crook) will always be wrong." This is why I'm a supporter of jury trials, as I've argued here in the past.

[NST==>Glen, could you spell out for me how one reasons from a particular, full stop? I can see how one reasons from the assignment of a particular to a category, but I genuinely, honestly, non-argumentativly cannot see how one argues from a particular without knowing what it’s a particular OF and/or having some rule to apply. <==nst]

 [NST==>For me, you raise here, explicitly for the first time, the relation between the terms “ontological” and “deontological”.  I have always been confused about them, and your message has goaded me to figure it out.  It turns out that THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER!  Here from etymologyonline.com.

 

DEONTOLOGY: "science of moral duty, ethics," 1817, from Greek deont-, combining form of deon "that which is binding, duty" (neuter present participle of dei "is binding") + -ology. Said to have been coined by Bentham, but it is used in a wider sense than he intended it. Related: Deontological.

 

ONTOLOGY: metaphysical science or study of being," 1660s (Gideon Harvey), from Modern Latin ontologia (c. 1600), from onto- + -logy. ONTO- word-forming element meaning "a being, individual; being, existence," from Greek onto-, from stem of on (genitive ontos) "being," neuter present participle of einai "to be" (from PIE root *es- "to be"

 

They come from entirely different Greek roots!  One is not the opposite of the other.  So, there is no hidden tension invoked by these words, however ever tempting it may be, between the world as it should be (deontology) and the world as it is (ontology).  I supposed if one believed that existence consisted entirely of obligations one would be a monist deontological ontologist.  Reminds me of that joke about the kid who could never understand the meaning of Dog. 

 

<==nst]

 

Is the criminologist truly engaging in an inferential process by which he builds rules to (completely, perfectly) shrink-wrap multiple particulars?  Or is the criminologist more of a pluralist, open to the failure of any given predicate he may infer?

[NST==>Glen, I wonder if you are thinking of abduction as inferring principles from particulars.  That, of course, is induction.  Abducing is inferring the identity of something from one or more of its characteristics.  You see a flash of blue on your feeder: “bluejay”.  All the criminologist is doing is suggesting that this death is not an instance of police brutality but, in fact, is an instance of “suicide by cop”.   Of course, now that I reread your message, the shrink-wrap metaphor does apply to multiple-abductions.  So, I suppose, “flash of blue, large aggressive bird, long beak, loud “jay” call” is all shrunk-wrapped by “bluejay”.  But the original step, the “I have here a blue jay” step, is the abductive step. This is part of what is mysterious about abduction – it is unclear what it gets you unless you have a really clear and powerful idea of what a category is … which I don’t.   <==nst]

 

Thanks, again, for answering.  I guess you and I are the only ones who are going to engage on this one, so I am particularly grateful.

 

Nick

 

On 8/20/19 12:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Once you become aware of abduction as a mental operation, you start to

> see it everywhere.  I saw it in Malcom Gladwell’s three part series (  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-standard-case/id1119389968?i=1000444756825; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-rocks-taxonomy/id1119389968?i=1000445285031; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/descend-into-the-particular/id1119389968?i=1000445850049)on Jesuitical casuistry.  I always thought of casuistry as a form of sophistry or hypocrisy, but apparently it began is as method for incorporating the new experiences that global travel brought to the 16^th Century Catholic World.  As an inquiry into the identity of a particular case, it looks a lot like abduction to me.  Because many of you live in NM, you may take particular interest in the third episode, which presents an analysis of the Angelo Navarro shooting by Albuquerque police. Was it case of a violent man charging the police with a weapon?  Or was it the case of a racially motivated firing squad of unarmed men by heavily armed police?  Or, ….? You would get a lot of benefit from just listening to this one episode, but to fully understand its philosophical impact, you need the other two to set the context.

 

--

uǝlƃ

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Re: abduction and casuistry

gepr
First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!

On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.

On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.

On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.

In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.

On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.

Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.

So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

On 8/21/19 9:40 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 6:06 PM
> To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry
>
>  
>
> Admittedly without more context -- and in my ignorance, my first reaction is to accuse you (and Gladwell) of a category error.
>
> [NST==>Ach! Hoist by my own petard, again! <==nst]
>
> The criminologist doesn't sound like he's advocating anything like casuistry (or what I'd argue is the inferential purpose of abduction). He seems to be arguing for something closer to non- or anti-deontological reasoning ... The only rule is that there are no rules.
>
> [NST==>Yes, I wondered about that.  Can a casuist be Rigorous.  Now, Glen, do you and I agree, or disagree, on the value of [and also on the perils of] rigor.  I think of rigor as something one tries out to see where one arrives.  One does something forced, automatic and counter intuitive for a while (think mathematics) in the hope that when one is done, the rigor delivers one to a more integrated, intelligible, articulable state of thought.  So, if casuistry is incapable of rigor, I probably don’t want any part of it. I am less certain about “meta-rigor”.  Do I have any fixed rules for when rigor “should” come into play.   Do you agree with any of that? <==nst]
>
>  
>
> It's reasonable, of course, for a self-described monist
>
> [NST==>Ach!  No!  See below!<==nst]
>
>   to hunt for the Grand Unified Rule of Reality, the master equation that need only have all it's many (even countably infinite) variables *bound* to values for the answer to bubble forth like from an oracle.
>
> [NST==>Hang on thar, big fella!  Are you confusing monism with monotheism?  There is nothing ethical about monism.  It is simply the position that we will think more clearly if we postulate only one kind of stuff (“experience”, in my case) and deriving all other “stuffs” from organizations of that single basic stuff.  <==nst]
>
>   But people like me might react: "Of COURSE, you have to look at the particulars of every situation because *any* predicate you infer (by hook or crook) will always be wrong." This is why I'm a supporter of jury trials, as I've argued here in the past.
>
> [NST==>Glen, could you spell out for me how one reasons from a particular, full stop? I can see how one reasons from the assignment of a particular to a category, but I genuinely, honestly, non-argumentativly cannot see how one argues from a particular without knowing what it’s a particular OF and/or having some rule to apply. <==nst]
>
>   [NST==>For me, you raise here, explicitly for the first time, the relation between the terms “ontological” and “deontological”.  I have always been confused about them, and your message has goaded me to figure it out.  It turns out that THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER!  Here from etymologyonline.com.
>
>  
>
> DEONTOLOGY: "science of moral duty, ethics," 1817, from Greek deont-, combining form of deon "that which is binding, duty" (neuter present participle of dei "is binding") + -ology. Said to have been coined by Bentham, but it is used in a wider sense than he intended it. Related: Deontological.
>
>  
>
> ONTOLOGY: metaphysical science or study of being," 1660s (Gideon Harvey), from Modern Latin ontologia (c. 1600), from onto- + -logy. ONTO- word-forming element meaning "a being, individual; being, existence," from Greek onto-, from stem of on (genitive ontos) "being," neuter present participle of einai "to be" (from PIE root *es- <https://www.etymonline.com/word/*es-?ref=etymonline_crossreference>  "to be"
>
>  
>
> They come from entirely different Greek roots!  One is not the opposite of the other.  So, there is no hidden tension invoked by these words, however ever tempting it may be, between the world as it should be (deontology) and the world as it is (ontology).  I supposed if one believed that existence consisted entirely of obligations one would be a monist deontological ontologist.  Reminds me of that joke about the kid who could never understand the meaning of Dog.

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Re: abduction and casuistry

gepr
Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":

> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>
> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>
> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.

(Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:

> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.

As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".

[†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913



On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:

> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>
> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>
> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>
> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>
> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>
> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>
> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>
> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Re: abduction and casuistry

Frank Wimberly-2
A good word to generalize implication, causation, etc. Is entailment.  There is an old book by Anderson and Belnap which may shed some light on abduction.  It's title is The Logic of Entailment.

I always thought that abduction had the form "If A entails B then the presence/occurrence of B makes it more Likely that A is present/has occurred." I don't see how that is represented by the formalism you quoted, however.

Frank 

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":

> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>
> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>
> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.

(Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:

> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.

As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".

[†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913



On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:
> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>
> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>
> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>
> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>
> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>
> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>
> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>
> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by gepr
Hi, Glen,

This is one of those moments when Steve Smith may be able to rescue my ability to participate further in this conversation by making a translation.   Steve?  Can you help here?  

By the way, I am still puzzled by how one makes inferences or explanations without categories and/or principles?  Can you give me an example from everyday life?  

So, the way into my basement requires passing through a low doorway.  Every year, in the first week we come here, I go down there and ram my head on the top of the door.   Ok, so the next time I go down, as soon as I enter the passageway leading to the door, I feel uneasy ...."This is like the time I bumped my head" ... and, unless I am demented by haste, I duck my head.  Simple as this example is, still it involves (on my account, anyway), the application of a principle to a category.  

Which suggests to me that when you seem to talk about rule-less thinking (unruly thinking?), you actually talking about choosing among different sorts of rules and categories, how we decide amongst them, when we decide to give up on one and employ another.

 Perhaps this is a way of asking the same question:  As you understand "deontological" thought, how is it different from plain-old logical thought?  

Nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 1:49 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":

> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>
> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>
> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.

(Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:

> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.

As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".

[†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913



On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:

> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>
> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>
> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>
> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>
> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>
> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>
> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>
> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Gillian Densmore
image.png
image.png

In light of over thinking, and taking a yet another thread into some as yet found mirror universe- I less than subtly discrupt with silly memes, as a not so subtle hint that somethings aint worth over thinking
^Said in a John Clease tone because I haven't a clue how to spell that amazing mans name

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 7:26 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi, Glen,

This is one of those moments when Steve Smith may be able to rescue my ability to participate further in this conversation by making a translation.   Steve?  Can you help here? 

By the way, I am still puzzled by how one makes inferences or explanations without categories and/or principles?  Can you give me an example from everyday life? 

So, the way into my basement requires passing through a low doorway.  Every year, in the first week we come here, I go down there and ram my head on the top of the door.   Ok, so the next time I go down, as soon as I enter the passageway leading to the door, I feel uneasy ...."This is like the time I bumped my head" ... and, unless I am demented by haste, I duck my head.  Simple as this example is, still it involves (on my account, anyway), the application of a principle to a category. 

Which suggests to me that when you seem to talk about rule-less thinking (unruly thinking?), you actually talking about choosing among different sorts of rules and categories, how we decide amongst them, when we decide to give up on one and employ another.

 Perhaps this is a way of asking the same question:  As you understand "deontological" thought, how is it different from plain-old logical thought? 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 1:49 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":

> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>
> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>
> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.

(Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:

> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.

As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".

[†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913



On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:
> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>
> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>
> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>
> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>
> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>
> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>
> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>
> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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FRIAM-COMIC
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Gillian Densmore

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 7:47 PM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
image.png
image.png

In light of over thinking, and taking a yet another thread into some as yet found mirror universe- I less than subtly discrupt with silly memes, as a not so subtle hint that somethings aint worth over thinking
^Said in a John Clease tone because I haven't a clue how to spell that amazing mans name

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 7:26 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi, Glen,

This is one of those moments when Steve Smith may be able to rescue my ability to participate further in this conversation by making a translation.   Steve?  Can you help here? 

By the way, I am still puzzled by how one makes inferences or explanations without categories and/or principles?  Can you give me an example from everyday life? 

So, the way into my basement requires passing through a low doorway.  Every year, in the first week we come here, I go down there and ram my head on the top of the door.   Ok, so the next time I go down, as soon as I enter the passageway leading to the door, I feel uneasy ...."This is like the time I bumped my head" ... and, unless I am demented by haste, I duck my head.  Simple as this example is, still it involves (on my account, anyway), the application of a principle to a category. 

Which suggests to me that when you seem to talk about rule-less thinking (unruly thinking?), you actually talking about choosing among different sorts of rules and categories, how we decide amongst them, when we decide to give up on one and employ another.

 Perhaps this is a way of asking the same question:  As you understand "deontological" thought, how is it different from plain-old logical thought? 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 1:49 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":

> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>
> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>
> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.

(Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:

> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.

As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".

[†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913



On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:
> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>
> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>
> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>
> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>
> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>
> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>
> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>
> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Re: abduction and casuistry

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Maybe, but I'm literally on my way to visit Glen in Portland.  
Actually... to visit daughter and grandson and much more but hoping to
see him on the trip!   I'll take a closer look in the next few days and
see if there is anything I can add.

- Steve

On 8/22/19 7:25 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Hi, Glen,
>
> This is one of those moments when Steve Smith may be able to rescue my ability to participate further in this conversation by making a translation.   Steve?  Can you help here?  
>
> By the way, I am still puzzled by how one makes inferences or explanations without categories and/or principles?  Can you give me an example from everyday life?  
>
> So, the way into my basement requires passing through a low doorway.  Every year, in the first week we come here, I go down there and ram my head on the top of the door.   Ok, so the next time I go down, as soon as I enter the passageway leading to the door, I feel uneasy ...."This is like the time I bumped my head" ... and, unless I am demented by haste, I duck my head.  Simple as this example is, still it involves (on my account, anyway), the application of a principle to a category.  
>
> Which suggests to me that when you seem to talk about rule-less thinking (unruly thinking?), you actually talking about choosing among different sorts of rules and categories, how we decide amongst them, when we decide to give up on one and employ another.
>
>  Perhaps this is a way of asking the same question:  As you understand "deontological" thought, how is it different from plain-old logical thought?  
>
> Nick  
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 1:49 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry
>
> Maybe to give context to my hand-wavey colloquial nonsense below, I *really* like Gabbay and Woods' [†] formulation of an "abductive schema":
>
>> Let Δ=(A_1,…,A_n) be a *database* of some kind. It could be a theory or an inventory of beliefs, for example. Let ⊢ be a *yielding relation*, or, in the widest possible sense, a consequence relation. Let Τ be a given wff (well-formulated formula) representing, e.g., a fact, a true proposition, known state of affairs, etc. And let A_(n+j), j=1,…,k be wffs. Then <Δ,⊢,Τ,A_(n+j)> is an abductive resolution if and only if the following conditions hold.
>>
>> 1. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} ⊢ Τ
>> 2. Δ⋃{A_(n+j)} is a consistent set
>> 3. Δ ⊬ Τ
>> 4. {A_(n+j)} ⊬ Τ
>>
>> The generality of this schema allows for variable interpretations of ⊢. In standard AI approaches to abduction there is a tendency to treat ⊢ as a classical deductive consequence. But, as we have seen, this is unrealistically restrictive.
> (Emphasis is theirs, at least in the draft copy I have.) They go on to assert:
>
>> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.
> In my colloquial description, Δ is the collection of old dots there at the start of the process and Τ is the new dot. It's open whether or not the set of wffs (A) are also dots or part of the connections drawn between them, depending on how you feel about *dot composition* (e.g. subsets of dots that are all very close together, so we just draw them as one big dot or somesuch) and scale/resolution. Rule (2) is *clearly* a rule for how the dots can be connected. In general, consistency is also an ambiguous concept.
>
> As always, I'm probably wrong about whatever it is Gabbay and Woods are saying. Any errors are mine. But maybe their words above can give some context for how I feel about "reasoning from particulars".
>
> [†] https://www.powells.com/book/-9780444517913
>
>
>
> On 8/22/19 8:26 AM, glen∈ℂ wrote:
>> First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!
>>
>> On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.
>>
>> On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.
>>
>> On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.
>>
>> In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.
>>
>> On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.
>>
>> Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.
>>
>> So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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>
>
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>

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Re: abduction and casuistry

gepr
In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2
Sorry for my incompleteness. I should have stated that G&W say the schema is for a *solved* abduction problem. What you're describing is the exploration of the *inverse* map. Using the conclusion, you infer the premise(s) that fit. I'd hoped it would be obvious this is possible with the connect the dots game. It should be easy to imagine a field of dots and thinking something like "That could be a face. All it needs is an extra dot for the nose."

G&W mention this in general when they say:
>> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.


On 8/22/19 5:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I always thought that abduction had the form "If A entails B then the
> presence/occurrence of B makes it more Likely that A is present/has
> occurred." I don't see how that is represented by the formalism you quoted,
> however.


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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Frank Wimberly-2

->> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.

That's how I read the formal paragraph.
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 9:26 AM glen∈ℂ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Sorry for my incompleteness. I should have stated that G&W say the schema is for a *solved* abduction problem. What you're describing is the exploration of the *inverse* map. Using the conclusion, you infer the premise(s) that fit. I'd hoped it would be obvious this is possible with the connect the dots game. It should be easy to imagine a field of dots and thinking something like "That could be a face. All it needs is an extra dot for the nose."

G&W mention this in general when they say:
>> ⊢ can be treated as a relation which gives with respect to Τ *whatever* property the investigator (the abducer) is interested in Τ's having, and which is not delivered by Δ alone or by {A_(n+j)} alone.


On 8/22/19 5:50 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I always thought that abduction had the form "If A entails B then the
> presence/occurrence of B makes it more Likely that A is present/has
> occurred." I don't see how that is represented by the formalism you quoted,
> however.


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Re: abduction and casuistry

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by gepr
Glen,

Oh, by the way, I DID miss Dave's contribution.  Every once a while, just to keep me nimble, the FRIAM server doesn't send me something, so this may be a case of that.   Can you forward it to me?  

Thanks,

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 11:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

First, did you miss Dave's contribution?  It was more on-topic than mine!

On Rigor: Yes, there's quite a bit of what you say I can agree with. But only if I modify *my* understanding of "rigor". I think rigor is any methodical, systematic behavior to which one adheres to strictly. It is the fidelity, the strict adherence that defines "rigor", not the underlying structure of the method or system. And in that sense, one can be rigorously anti-method. Rigorously pro-method means adhering to that method and never making exceptions. Rigorously anti-method means *never* following a method and paying (infinite) attention to all exceptions, i.e. treating everything as a single instance particular, an exception. I grant that "methodical anti-method" is a paradox... but only that, not a contradiction.

On monism vs. monotheism: The simple answer is "no". I'm not confusing the two. By reducing every-stuff to one-stuff, *and* talking about types of inference like ab-, in-, and de-duction, you are being (at least in my view) axiomatic, with a formal system based on 1 ur-element. Everything else in the formal system has to be derived from that ur-element via rules. To boot, your attempt to classify casuistry and abduction (same or different is irrelevant, it's the classification effort that matters) argues for some sort of formalization of them. A/The formalization of abduction is an active research topic. My use of the word "deontological" was intended to refer to this rule-based, axiomatic way of thinking. I'm sorry if that lead to a red herring off into moral philosophy land.

On inferring from particulars: While it's true that induction builds a predicate around a particular, it is a "closed" set. (Scare quotes because "closed" can mean so much.) Abduction doesn't build predicates and any explanation it does build is "open" in some sense. So, I would agree with you that one can't really *argue* from a particular using abduction. I tend to think of it more like brain storming, in a kindasorta Popperian, open way. Any proto-hypothesis can be brought to bear on the abductive target. And the best we can do is play around with the abductive target to see if it might kindasorta *fit* into that open set of proto-hypotheses. Once you land on a set of proto-hypotheses that's small enough to be feasibly formulated into testable hypotheses, then you reason by induction over those hypotheses.

In some ways, this would be very like what I, in my ignorance, think casuistry is. I'd argue that an experimentalist's focus on putting data taking in 1st priority and hypothesis formulation in 2nd priority falls in the same camp. So, I agree that casuistry looks a lot like abduction. But I don't think that that criminologist was doing either of them.

On ontology vs. rules *and* reasoning from particulars: The proto-hypotheses I mention above do not have to take the form of "rules to apply" to the abductive target. Think of the game "connect the dots", where the dots are particulars and they are/can be interpolated and/or extrapolated by an infinite number of lines between them. On the one hand, more dots can make it more difficult to find a pattern that includes the *new* dot, but perhaps only when you're already pre-biased with a set of lines that connect the old dots. On the other hand, if you're rule-free when you look at the old set of dots *and* rule-free when you look at them with the new dot included, you're open to any set of connecting lines.

Of course, in science, we do have an ur-rule ... that *all* the dots must be connected. So, that constrains the set of lines that connect the dots. And the more dots, the fewer ways there are to connect them. But practicality demands that we doubt at least some dots. So, we're allowed to throw out the weakest dots if that allows us to form more interesting connective patterns.

So, in this scenario, the proto-hypotheses are really just collections of old dots in which the new dot must sit.  We're not reasoning from *one* particular to testable hypotheses. We're reasoning from the addition of that particular to collections of other particulars.

On 8/21/19 9:40 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 6:06 PM
> To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry
>
>  
>
> Admittedly without more context -- and in my ignorance, my first reaction is to accuse you (and Gladwell) of a category error.
>
> [NST==>Ach! Hoist by my own petard, again! <==nst]
>
> The criminologist doesn't sound like he's advocating anything like casuistry (or what I'd argue is the inferential purpose of abduction). He seems to be arguing for something closer to non- or anti-deontological reasoning ... The only rule is that there are no rules.
>
> [NST==>Yes, I wondered about that.  Can a casuist be Rigorous.  Now, Glen, do you and I agree, or disagree, on the value of [and also on the perils of] rigor.  I think of rigor as something one tries out to see where one arrives.  One does something forced, automatic and counter intuitive for a while (think mathematics) in the hope that when one is done, the rigor delivers one to a more integrated, intelligible, articulable state of thought.  So, if casuistry is incapable of rigor, I probably don’t want any part of it. I am less certain about “meta-rigor”.  Do I have any fixed rules for when rigor “should” come into play.   Do you agree with any of that? <==nst]
>
>  
>
> It's reasonable, of course, for a self-described monist
>
> [NST==>Ach!  No!  See below!<==nst]
>
>   to hunt for the Grand Unified Rule of Reality, the master equation that need only have all it's many (even countably infinite) variables *bound* to values for the answer to bubble forth like from an oracle.
>
> [NST==>Hang on thar, big fella!  Are you confusing monism with
> monotheism?  There is nothing ethical about monism.  It is simply the
> position that we will think more clearly if we postulate only one kind
> of stuff (“experience”, in my case) and deriving all other “stuffs”
> from organizations of that single basic stuff.  <==nst]
>
>   But people like me might react: "Of COURSE, you have to look at the particulars of every situation because *any* predicate you infer (by hook or crook) will always be wrong." This is why I'm a supporter of jury trials, as I've argued here in the past.
>
> [NST==>Glen, could you spell out for me how one reasons from a
> particular, full stop? I can see how one reasons from the assignment
> of a particular to a category, but I genuinely, honestly,
> non-argumentativly cannot see how one argues from a particular without
> knowing what it’s a particular OF and/or having some rule to apply.
> <==nst]
>
>   [NST==>For me, you raise here, explicitly for the first time, the relation between the terms “ontological” and “deontological”.  I have always been confused about them, and your message has goaded me to figure it out.  It turns out that THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER!  Here from etymologyonline.com.
>
>  
>
> DEONTOLOGY: "science of moral duty, ethics," 1817, from Greek deont-, combining form of deon "that which is binding, duty" (neuter present participle of dei "is binding") + -ology. Said to have been coined by Bentham, but it is used in a wider sense than he intended it. Related: Deontological.
>
>  
>
> ONTOLOGY: metaphysical science or study of being," 1660s (Gideon Harvey), from Modern Latin ontologia (c. 1600), from onto- + -logy. ONTO- word-forming element meaning "a being, individual; being, existence," from Greek onto-, from stem of on (genitive ontos) "being," neuter present participle of einai "to be" (from PIE root *es- <https://www.etymonline.com/word/*es-?ref=etymonline_crossreference>  "to be"
>
>  
>
> They come from entirely different Greek roots!  One is not the opposite of the other.  So, there is no hidden tension invoked by these words, however ever tempting it may be, between the world as it should be (deontology) and the world as it is (ontology).  I supposed if one believed that existence consisted entirely of obligations one would be a monist deontological ontologist.  Reminds me of that joke about the kid who could never understand the meaning of Dog.

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Re: abduction and casuistry

gepr
How about a link to his archived message?

http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2019-August/080050.html


On August 24, 2019 12:21:13 PM PDT, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>Oh, by the way, I DID miss Dave's contribution.  Every once a while,
>just to keep me nimble, the FRIAM server doesn't send me something, so
>this may be a case of that.   Can you forward it to me?  

--
glen

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: abduction and casuistry

Nick Thompson

Thanks, Glen,

 

This is really good.  I am going to repost it, in case I was not the only one omitted in the feed:

 

Dave West wrote:

 

1.       a secondary definition of casuistry is "resolving moral problems by application of theoretical rules."  NSTèDave:  this is interesting.  Can you give me any idea of what a “theoretical” rule is?  çnst

 

2. A Jesuit practice, "reform of the individual," seems to incorporate a sense (not definition) of "individual" consistent with Duns Scotus' concept of haecciety and, because Peirce used that term in his work, to explain what he meant by the individual, there seems to be a thread to medieval Catholicism. NSTèPeirce’s attachment to Scotus is legendary, so this is indeed interesting. çnst

 

3. Jesuit values, e.g. "Respect For The World, Its History And Mystery" and especially, Learning From Experience lead to philosophical thought that is not contradictory to Peircian notions of experience. NSTèDave, how do you KNOW this stuff, and why have you hidden it from me before. Is this from your time at çnst

 

4. But, Jesuits are dualists, not in the objective world / experience of it sense (there they seem to be quite close to Peirce) but in the sense that TRUTH can come, not just from experience (and science) but from revelation - the direct word of God. NSTèSo, whose experience are we talking about here: mine, yours, or OURS.  And what do we do when experience contradicts the WOG. And is revelation a kind of experience?çnst

 

5. Jesuits, among many others (Galileo), often found themselves at odds with the Church over the issue of whether or not a thing could be true in philosophy but not in theology, or vice versa. The Jesuits focused on truth in philosophy and their method for identifying that truth would, again, not be incompatible with Peirce. So only point four would be contrary to Peirce's ideas. NSTèAgain, I would love for you to say more, but that seems a lot to ask.  Is there a Jesuit philosophy for Idiots, anywhere?  çnst

 

6. No intellectual lineage is evident from any Jesuit philosopher and Charles Sanders. NSTèWell, a quick, lazy-man’s Google suggests that you are right!  But wouldn’t that be extraordinary?  Vaaaary EENteresting, David.  Vaaaaary EENteresting.  çnst

 

davew

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: glen [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2019 7:36 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>; Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

 

How about a link to his archived message?

 

http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2019-August/080050.html

 

 

On August 24, 2019 12:21:13 PM PDT, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

>Oh, by the way, I DID miss Dave's contribution.  Every once a while,

>just to keep me nimble, the FRIAM server doesn't send me something, so

>this may be a case of that.   Can you forward it to me? 

 

--

glen


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