What is central to the scientific method of the empirical sciences (in contrast to what some term “the science of mathematics” and such, which have no such method) is communal verification via empirical means (aka, peer review and replicability of test results) that falsifiable hypotheses are not in fact false and, thereby, are likely to be true. — javra

This is a simple logical truth - a hypotheses being unfalsified does not make it more likely to be true. On this we agree. We could take a Bayesian approach to selecting amongst competing hypotheses, but note well that this is not adopting induction. There is a world of difference between an hypothesis being unfalsified and it's being more likely than other hypotheses. Popper’s point was exactly that: science isn’t about confirming hypotheses through accumulation of positive cases (which falls afoul of Hume’s problem of induction), but about weeding them out through falsification. A hypothesis standing unrefuted is not “more true,” it’s just “not yet eliminated.”

A very large part of The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a frequentist defence of falsification. The probability of a universal law (e.g., "all swans are white") is always zero in the strict mathematical sense, because it makes infinitely many claims about unobserved cases. The case he made was the defence of a statistical definition of the corroboration of an hypothesis that survives a sever attemtp at falsification. But this could not be made to fly.

The problems were many, but the Duhem–Quine problem is central. An hypotheses is never tested in isolation, but in unison with a vast array of other hypotheses, each of which might account for any falsification. Lakatos’ research programmes, Kuhn’s paradigms, and Bayesian epistemology all tried to capture what Popper’s model missed.

As with all trial-and-error heuristics, most abductions are bound to be wrong. Yes, of course. Notwithstanding, for any paradigm shift to ever occur one must first conceive of a new paradigm from outside the boundaries of the old that better accounts for the known data. This will not be a process of deduction, nor will it typically be one of induction (generalization from particulars, for example), but instead will typically commence with what we in retrospect will then likely claim to be a flash of insight, as per the Eureka moment; this then yet being abduction. One which happens to eventually produce a better understanding regarding what is by newly devised deductions and inductions, which yet pivot on the given roundabout abduction. But again, without being falsifiable, it will not be science (not of the empirical kind). — javra

Nice. But is it right, or even fair, to lump all this together and call it "abduction", and then to set it out in some gross oversimplification such as

The surprising fact, C, is observed.
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. — SEP article

As I said to @Relativist, that is surely a derogation of science.

And then that further point, to relate this back to 's OP: abduction, in any of it's many guises, does not solve Hume's problem of induction.

From what I know of Feyerabend, he appears to be discussing the creative processes of scientists — Relativist

His work is a bit broader than just that. His classic formulation, "anything goes", is of course mistaken; but the interesting bit is how it is mistaken - what it is that restricts which ideas are considered scientific and which are not.

Of course scientists are creative. Calling there creativity "abduction" and locking it down to Peirce's simplistic schema is denigrating that creativity. Positing abduction as a response to Hume's scepticism is piling obfuscation on top of misunderstanding.

The activities in which scientists engage are not algorithmic, not mechanical. Those accounts of scientific method that set it out as such do science a disservice.

Please, disagree.

Science is a human enterprise, and as such is communal. A picture of how science works must include the social aspects, looking at the communication between scientists. Competing theories may have a shared reference, although since before Feyerabend and Kuhn it has been understood that those references are themselves embedded in theory. The sociology of science is not the whole story, but it is a part of the story.

Go back to your OP

Hume concluded that fundamental beliefs, such as the existence of an external world or the existence of the self, are not rationally justifiable but are legitimate because they are the result of experience and custom. — JuanZu

More recent developments in Philosophy show us how experience and custom are themselves grounded in the community in which we live. To doubt requires a background of presumed certainty. Those fundamental beliefs are what enable doubt.

Again, science is not just a social enterprise, but it is in part a social enterprise.

What we can take from Hume is that induction has not been validated. Our beliefs in what are loosely called the external world or the existence of the self are not deduced from first principles, nor inducted from some finite set of observations, but presumed as the background against which our enterprises - including science - can occur.

Abduction is worse. The SEP notes that Peirce’s conception of abduction shifts over his long career, making it hard to pin down a coherent, stable doctrine. Peirce apparently thought abduction was about inventing hypotheses, not justifying them; and so is nothing more than conjecturing. The schematic form he offers, mentioned previously, amounts to adopting an idea one already has - hence my somewhat hyperbolic accusation of confirmation bias. What is certain is that abduction is no improvement on induction, and certainly cannot overcome Hume's objections.

A neat example that supports the hypothesis that "abduction" - understood as accepting the best hypothesis - is central to scientific method. That's what confirmation bias entails. Popper taught us to look also for examples that run counter to our expectations - to look for falsifications. Let's do that.

I gave the example of the comparison between the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, above. The first renderings of the Copernican system were at best no simpler or more accurate than those of the then quite well developed Ptolemaic account.

Brownian motion was noticed in pollen grains in 1827. For decades, it was accounted for as at first evidence of a vital force in the pollen, then when it was demonstrated in non-organic particles, as evidence of eddies in the fluid. It wasn't until Einstein provided a statistical analysis of Brownian Motion as the result of collisions with other particles that it was linked to molecular theory - the maths made Brownian motion a testable, quantitative prediction of molecular theory. Feyerabend pointed out that the acceptance of this explanation is thus theory-laden, dependent on the availability of a mathematical interpretation in order to allow empirical confirmation.

Bringing this back to your post, what this shows is that what counts as providing the greater explanatory power is dependent on the ad hoc and auxiliary hypotheses employed. There is no simple way to compare competing hypotheses, since each hypothesis brings with it a differing account of what observation is relevant.

The surprising fact, Brownian motion, is observed.
But if there are eddies in the fluid, Then Brownian motion would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that there are eddies in the fluid.

Abduction here leads away from the better answer!


Considering relativity again, the procession of Mercury was explained by an otherwise unseen additional planet - which was even named "Vulcan". It had to exist, becasue it was the best explanation for the observed phenomena - exactly in line with Abduction:

The surprising fact, the procession of Mercury, is observed.
But if Vulcan were true, the procession of Mercury would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that Vulcan exists.

But this abduction was mistaken!

What these examples show is not just that abduction is sometimes mistaken, but that it leads to a lack of progress, and that other, wildly differing background assumptions are instead needed to progress our understanding.

Notice that in each case, abduction leads to the confirmation of the accepted paradigm, where what was needed was a change to that very paradigm. Abduction as a counterproductive process.

A nod to @Joshs.

If a conclusion were "determined" (not underdetermined) it would be a deduction- a conclusion that follows necessarily.

Of course, as you said, deduction would be preferred, but in real life (including science) we rarely have sufficient information to make a deduction. But there is often sufficient information to support some hypotheses more than others. — Relativist

Quite right. We need pay close attention to that last bit. We may indeed support one hypotheses over another, but the "why" cannot be based solely on information - there must also be a preference. A mere list of facts is insufficient to decide between competing hypotheses.

That's again the problem with abduction - it doesn't set out why we should prefer one hypotheses amongst the many.

See the examples from Feyerabend given in my reply to @Janus, just above. An examination of the history of science shows that it does not follow the supposed prescription you provide; and indeed, that scientific progress is dependent on breaking those conventions.

The point I would press here is again that what makes science work is not a series of logical rules, but a group of sociological rules. It's not a special type of logic - induction or abduction - that makes science effective, but the open interplay between scientists.

...it should involve actively trying to falsify current accepted belief and theory and attempting to find better, more comprehensive hypotheses. — Janus

Should. But should it?

We have before us quite different notions of abduction. Sometimes it is talked of as the process of forming an hypothesis. We know that, for any set of observations, there are innumerable possible explanations. Simply having available a range of hypotheses is insufficient. We must choose between them.

In the supplement, Peirce's version of abduction is taken from this quote:

The surprising fact, C, is observed.
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. — SEP article

In reality, we do not have just A - we have alternate hypotheses, each of which explains C. And we have the possibility that C is incorrect. C is also theory laden - observations dependent on our prior presumptions as to what it is we are observing.

We are never in a position to say that this hypothesis is categorically better than that one.

So the SEP account brings in ABD1:

Given evidence E and candidate explanations H1,…, Hn of E, infer the truth of that Hi which best explains E. — SEP article

And to the problem of which hypothesis is best. Abduction does not tell us. It instead brings in the auxiliaries of simplicity and coherence, aesthetic preferences that remain unclarified within the context of abduction. So again, abduction amounts to choosing the hypothesis that looks good to you.

Feyerabend examines examples in detail, such as the tower argument, early telescopic observations, or Brownian motion, to show that science often progresses by insisting on an explanation that is not the simplest or most complete. An example - Copernicus's heliocentric model was both less accurate and more complex than the Ptolemaic alternative. The Copernican case showed that the heliocentric theory was adopted despite not being more accurate, and actually being more complex, contradicting the idea that science always progresses by choosing simpler, more predictive theories.

One example amongst many.

Now Feyerabend used such examples to show that science does not conform to the model proposed by Popper - that falsification, while useful, is very far from the full story. The case is even worse with Abduction, which remains ill-defined and obscure.

Science in real life is much, much messier than the descriptions given by Popper or Peirce. And you are right that the SEP article does not set out the notion of abduction well - but we need add that, that is a problem for abduction, it remains ill defined. The term papers over the issues of method, rather than explicating them.

My own view is of science as a social phenomenon rather than a logical one. There is no firm method that underpins the practice of science, but rather a set of attitudes that involve openness to criticism, open discussion, join examination of evidence, collaboration - the basic liberal attitudes of which we are so in need.

This is perhaps the point of intersection between myself and .

—to repeat, they should be consistent with current scientific theory and understanding. If you want to call that confirmation bias, then you'd better apply that judgement to the whole of science. — Janus

Well, yes -

Second, abduction misses the paradigm-dependence of hypothesis generation. — Joshs

Conformation of the current scientific theory. Feyerabend would have a party here.

Abduction entails drawing a non-necessary inference from a set of data (intended to be all available, relevant data), that consists of an explanatory hypothesis for that data - one that is deemed to explain the data better* than alternatives. — Relativist

Cool. Nice and clean. Good stuff.

A few issues.

"Better" - an improvement on "best", but suffering the same ambiguity. If abduction is going to tell us which of the innumerable possible explanatory hypotheses to choose, then we need more than an asterisk and a deference. We need the basis for that choice. Otherwise abduction falls to underdetermination, to the Duhem–Quine problem.

Whence normatively? Deductions are preferred when valid. Inductions are preferred on the basis of Bayesian statistics. What of abduction? If it is statistical success, then isn't it just anther name for induction? If it's some pragmatic or parsimonious, isn't that just an appeal to aesthetics? to what you prefer?

So it comes down to how you cash out better/superior.

And hence my original point, that whatever criteria you choose, you are subsequently just reinforcing that choice.

Same here. To general disgust and annoyance. It's still large enough to make a difference, and the point - that labour may be divorced from government revenue by policy - stands.

you really haven’t given a validation of abduction. If you really believe that the whole of abduction is just brainstorming, then you’re missing quite a bit. Check out the SEP article perhaps.

Pretty much. Abduction was perhaps an attempt to form an algorithmic method for science, back in the days when such things were thought important. Where you are presumably coming to this from a phenomenal logical perspective, mine is more to do with the approaches of Popper, Quine and eventually Fayerabend. Perhaps what we have in common is the rejection of algorithmic processes.

That's not what was said. But if you can set out what you think abduction is, and how it works, just go ahead and do so.

I don't think anyone here can. I think folk have been told that what they are doing is abduction, but not looked to see what that meant; and when they do look, they will see the idea is hollow.

Show how I am mistaken.

:wink: I wish you would think.

Here's a thing - what does "abduction" mean? Even the SEP article can't say. So now you claim it's just making up an hypothesis. So why not just call it "hypothesising"? Why the new name?

Becasue Peirce liked triads, and wanted to add something to deduction and induction to make it a trinity. A very poor bit of abduction...

If you, any of you, think you have a clear notion of what abduction is, and why it is useful, set it out! There's be a Doctorate in it for you.

I was disagreeing with the assertion that abduction has anything to to with confirmation bias, and I say this is not so because hypotheses are to be tested, not accepted on account of their "feeling right" or whatever. — Janus

Indeed, and my reply was to reaffirm that the testing of an hypothesis is not part of performing an abduction. Abducting is choosing the "best" hypothesis, on the basis of one's preferences - the very meaning of confirmation bias - the tendency to interpret a situation so as to confirm one's preexisting attitudes.

I don't think you understand what 'abduction' means in the context of science. — Janus

Yep. Just so. Do you?

It is the use of the imagination to come up with what seems to be the most fitting explanatory hypotheses. — Janus

Ok, that's it's proposed use - how does it manage to do this?

to come up with what, consistent with whatever criteria, seems to be the best explanation possible — Janus

But there is no method for doing this - only what someone claims to be the "best" hypothesis.

To put it concisely 'abduction" simply refers to the process of forming hypotheses. — Janus

Well, if that is all it is, then it doesn't tell us which to choose among the many - which is "best"...


So we have deduction, and formal definitions of validity. We have induction, which consists in the claim that if all previous A's were B's, then we might well infer that all subsequent A's will be B's. As Hume pointed out it's formally invalid, but we do it anyway. Then we have a something labeled "abduction", that allows us to infer the best hypothesis, without telling us what "best" is. It's another name for selecting the hypothesis one prefers, without giving any reason.

There's more. Any explanation can be claimed to be the best, since no criteria are set out in the notion of abduction. But for any body of evidence, there are indefinitely many hypotheses that could explain it. Every test of a hypothesis involves multiple auxiliary assumptions. Any “failure” could be blamed on the main hypothesis or the auxiliary assumptions. Apply Duhem and Quine and the notion falls apart.

Do you reject everything science teaches? — Relativist

Of course not. A rejection of one way that philosophers have claimed science works is not a rejection of science. That scientific theory is developed through abduction is a theory about scientific method. Pointing out the problems with that theory is not pointing out problems with what scientists do, but with what philosophers claim that scientists do.

Abduction is the use of the creative imagination in formulating testable hypotheses that might best explain the observed facts. — Janus

There's that word "best" again. It hides that the criteria being used are things such as parsimony, coherence, and predictive success, normative concerns. Why not drop the pretence of "abduction" as a seperate rational process and look instead at the basis that scientists use for choosing between rival theories.

An abductive hypothesis is always provisional—open to rigorous testing, and thus quite the opposite of confirmation bias. — Janus

Notice that testing is a seperate process to abduction - one adduces the "best" explanation and then tests it. Abduction is not necessary for testing an hypothesis.

That's a pretty clear account.

...apply abduction... — Relativist

You are waving words around as if they were arguments. What is abduction, and how does it help? And the answer is quite vague. Abduction is little more than an attempt to formalise confirmation bias. It's presented as "given some evidence, infer the hypothesis that would best explain it" where "best" is left ill-defined. This leaves it entirely open to arbitrarily inferring any explanation to be the best.

Sure, confirmation bias is psychological and abduction is supposedly normative, but abduction lends itself to systematising whatever explanation matches our prior leanings. Philosophers reach for parsimony, coherence, and predictive success to justify abduction, but again these are often left ill-defined, and abduction a mere expression of preference rather than a piece of reasoning. Abduction is not an answer to Hume. Indeed, at its heart, it remains unclear what abduction amounts to; and as such, it is ineligible as a grounding for rational discourse.

Manpower balance will shift to Brasil,Indonesia, Pakistan and most African countries — I like sushi

I took your point to be about the development of those countries - Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan. As in, not about the population emigrating to Europe or North America. And that's a very good point - that is were the growth will be found for the next fifty years.

While it's true that on balance China is a net creditor, so is Japan, along with Germany, Singapore, Taiwan...

The USA is again outstanding in being a huge net debtor.

Australia is an interesting case, since it has such a high rate of Superanuation. An example of how the relation between labour an tax was broken. Wealth can be structured so that retirees are supported by accumulated savings and productivity, not simply by taxing the next generation’s wages. But not if it is concentrated in the hands of the few.

(except the Chinese) — Punshhh

Chinese debt is about 75% of GDP.

...world population is not only not growing but it is actually deceasing world wide. — dclements

All the data I see points to a 1% growth, decreasing steadily. Population is predicted to peek at 10.3 billion in 2084.

The relation between labour and tax was broken long ago. Labour force size and tax revenue are no longer tightly coupled, but the way tax systems are structured means they still matter. Tax on capital rather than labour can make good such shortfalls.

I think you were distracted away from a quite valid point.

Albo is streets ahead of the Libs. They are cutting each other up over "zero emissions" legislation. Australia recognised Palestine the other day, pissing off Trump, and Albo is in London at present trying to make some sense of AUKUS.

Maybe this will explain where we are at: As the government rejects Trump's UNGA rhetoric, Liberal leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie sounds decidedly Trumpian

My guess is that it would have something to do with entropy. — javra

Yep. It's entropy all the way down.


Old. I am surprised that Apo was reduced to name calling so quickly.

Weird, ain't it. — javra

A merely physical mythos cannot speak of such things.

Indeed, and you apparently caused some pique in ...

I think the difference between the billiard balls and the inoculations is the difference between a very simple instance where efficient cause probably does make sense and a more complicated one where it might not. — T Clark

The invitation in your OP was to consider how we use the word"cause", and you showed that causal chains and inferring probabilistic causes are quite different ways of speaking.

That's kinda the point. We imagine the cave and what we think being out of it looks like, but the reality is we can never know. Pretty sure solipsism pointed that one out. — Darkneos

Saying things such as that is how the fly constructs their bottle.

Some more:

The fact that it's unconscious means you cannot be aware of it, no matter how much more aware you become. — Darkneos

Getting out of the bottle, ironically means accepting there might not be a world or others with which you are a part of. — Darkneos

Seems you may be on your own on this one.

Ok. Curious, since I would not have thought it so far from your "What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact". That the reed hitting the black on the billiard table, causing it to move, is a different sort of explanation to that you went to the fridge because you wanted a beer, and different again to vaccinations causing the number of measles cases to decline. Do we agree that, despite these all being labeled causal explanations, they are quite different? And perhaps that indeed, there need be nothing that they have in common - wasn't that much the argument in your OP?

So yeah, whether the speech act counts as an act of violence is incidental to the speaker being culpable.

If you have time, take a look at at least the first few pages of Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts. It elicited an interesting discussion. At issue is the extent to which a perlocution is separable from an illocution.

Plato's cave is fine and all but the assumption in there is that we know what being out of the cave looks like. — Darkneos

As opposed to the assumption that we don't know what being out of the cave looks like...

Yep. That we know about our unconscious shows that it is not outside of our ruminations...

The fly bottle is self-imposed. — Ciceronianus

Yep.

Ok, fair enough. His is an answer for everything, so certainly not my cup of tea. There appear to be various quite different sorts of causal accounts, and no need for an overarching explanation as to what they have in common, beyond the general idea of regularity and our capacity for inference. it's more a way of offering an explanation than some underlying universal mechanism.

PoMo - How rude! :rofl:

My conclusion - identifying one element as the cause of another depends on where you look. What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. — T Clark

Reality is dichotomies all the way down. — apokrisis

Wouldn't one response be, T Clark, that identifying a dichotomy also depends on were you look? That what constitutes a dichotomy is also a matter of convention, at least as much as a matter of fact?

But further, it's not clear that making such a move would be at odds with what Apo has to say. After all, isn't viewing nature in the systems science tradition one choice amongst many - a matter of convention?

, then is the purpose of philosophy showing the way out, or shaking the bottle?

Yes. But so often the fly is comfortable where it is.

Why would we have advertising, prayer, speeches or Fox News if language was powerless? — Tom Storm

Indeed.

But that is the opinion expressed hereabouts. It has a place in the Sovereign Citizen virus, which has become more prominent Dow Nunder. It's part of the great myth of individualism.

I appreciate your continuing with this thread, Javra. I'd given it away, as on a par with the discussions of gun law and transgender issues - too fraught with high dudgeon to progress.

This caught my eye:

Do you think speech IS violence when it is hate speech?
— Fire Ologist

No. It can be quite harmful depending on subtext and context, but not all harm is violence. So, again, no. — javra

From earlier:

In Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts Rae Langton consider an example elaborated from Austin:
Two men stand beside a woman. The first man turns to the second, and says "Shoot her." The second man looks shocked, then raises a gun and shoots the woman.
Do we say that, since the act of shooting was not constitutive of the utterance of the first man, that he bears no responsibility for the killing? I think not. The consequences of an act might well be considered as part of that act. — Banno

Do we say that, since the act of shooting was not constitutive of the utterance of the first man, that the utterance was not a violent act? Well, is the issue here whether the utterance is violent, or whether the utterer is culpable? What part does the man giving the order have in the death of the woman?

You presented an interesting argument earlier, in response to assertions that utterances could not injure. You asked if Hitler injured people through his utterances. I don't think you received an answer, those you were addressing instead choosing to take offence by interpreting your argument as comparing them to Hitler - a merely rhetorical move, and somewhat sanctimonious given their attitude towards causing offence via mere words.

Perhaps the account I gave, from Searle via Langton, avoids the offence while maintaining the point. Can we sidestep the rhetorical deflection, and focus on the function of language in the action described. Do we hold the speaker responsible for the killing, despite his not having pulled the trigger?

It's also worth noting that the argument is not that all hate speech causes violence - another rhetorical ploy being used here. It's more about the othering that is central to hate speech, together with the issue of the culpability of the speaker in subsequent violence.

Cheers.

The who in JTB is most reliant on the belief. That's where the propositional attitude enters, and so the person who has the attitude.

Hence if you know something, then by that very fact you believe it.

If someone says we know such-and-such, it remains up to you to decide if they are correct - to decide if you believe them.

Still not seeing much here. I'll read the rest of the stuff from overnight.

Bits and pieces. But the OUP Very Short Introduction is at about my level.

as long as we don't stop there — Moliere

Never. It's a method, not an answer.

Three areas of interest, at least to me, are probabilities, and counterfactuals, and the relation between causation and action - not as competing alternatives but as complementary approaches addressing differing aspects of the wider topic of causation.

But of course what is being done here is not the search for an overarching theory so much as a group of interrelated explanations. Familiar stuff.