On guessing and reasoning: a reply to Paul Bourgine's

Resumo

Charles Peirce ends the above tentative definition of the grounds for abduction by stating that “the effort should therefore be to make each hypothesis, which is practically no more than a question, as near an even bet as possible” (CP 1.121). The reason why I am quoting this passage of the Collected Papers is that I assume it can justify why should I (with no solid background in symbolic logic or mathematics) dare coming up with a debate on Paul Bourgine’s article “Models of abduction.” Taking the following rendition of an abductive inference as a guide: 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. (CP 5.189) I therefore decided to consider Paul’s article as a “surprising fact,” and to try my best in devising relevant questions about it. I believe should thank my deductive capacities for enabling me to extract hopefully clear and reliable consequences from those questions, but I will only be able to evaluate the pertinence of my efforts after a moment o f induction I expect to share with you, dear reader.