Abstract
In this chapter, by highlighting the role of abduction in the scientific methodology, I will proceed to describe the function of ignorance in its structure, deeming it as an invaluable resource for the performance of this kind of ampliative reasoning. Abduction can indeed be described as “the fundamental problem of contemporary epistemology”, as proposed by Hintikka (1998), for some good reasons. The high formal flexibility and cognitive salience of abduction vastly depend on the role that ignorance plays in its formulation: abduction indeed represents an ampliative inference that preserves the agent’s ignorance and also allows the expansion of the agent’s knowledge. Thus, I will distinguish between the preservation of ignorance implied in the selective model of abduction and an enhancement of knowledge through ignorance that is provided by the generation of a new hypothesis in the creative abduction. Furthermore, I will refer to the difference between selective and creative abduction to spell out two kinds of ignored possibilities that are relevant for chance-discovery, highlighting the importance of “understanding the meaning of an impending phenomenon as a chance” as a chance-discovery activity driven by the agent’s ignorance.
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Notes
- 1.
Abduction can be said to expand the agent’s knowledge when (1) the knowledge-enhancing effect is at play and so the fruit of abduction is not potential knowledge but just knowledge (think of the Galilean thought experiment concerning falling bodies), and (2) when the guessed hypothesis (so potentially endowed with knowledge content) is accepted because it is evaluated (for example empirically).
- 2.
The multifarious character of cognition is also testified by Peirce’s conviction that iconicity hybridates logicality: the sentential aspects of symbolic disciplines like logic or algebra coexist with model-based features—iconic. Sentential features like symbols and conventional rules are intertwined with the spatial configuration, like in the case of “compound conventional signs” (written natural languages are concerned by iconic aspects too). What is called sentential abduction is in reality far from being strongly separated from model-based aspects: iconicity is always present in human reasoning, even if often hidden and implicit.
- 3.
\(K^*\) is an accessible successor of K to the degree that an agent has the know-how to construct it in a timely way; i.e., in ways that are of service in the attainment of targets linked to K. For example if I want to know how to spell ‘accommodate’, and have forgotten, then my target can’t be hit on the basis of K, what I now know. But I might go to my study and consult the dictionary. This is \(K^*\). It solves a problem originally linked to K.
- 4.
A detailed illustration of the AKM schema is given in Magnani (2009, chapter two, subsection 2.1.3).
- 5.
cf. Woods (2013, chapter ten).
- 6.
I need to remark here that minimality and consistency aren’t requirements of the GW-model but can be legitimately added to its discussion.
- 7.
As I will delineate better in the following section, what I called “ignorance-that” refers to specific ignorances the agent is aware of, against a broader kind of ignorance the agent is not aware of. In spite of the similarities, it does not relate to the difference between knowing-that and knowing-how.
- 8.
The distinction between off-line and on-line thinking is analyzed in detail in Magnani (2009, subsection 3.6.5, pp. 189–193). Some authors have raised doubts about the on-line/off-line distinction on the grounds that no thinking agent is ever wholly on-line or wholly off-line. I think this distinction is at least useful from an epistemological perspective as a way of theoretically illustrating different cognitive levels in human and animal cognition. It must be kept in mind that the theoretical distinctions between types of abduction are meant to frame the main traits of each type, but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive and different analyses may highlight different kinds of abduction at play in a same process. Sentential abduction refers to the possibility of working on sentences, be them expressed in logical or verbal language, and it is hence more closely connected to traditional logical studies. Nevertheless, the iconic dimension is never that far out: whereas the semantic understanding and appraisal of a sentence concern sentential abduction, the visual or auditive recognition of the signs expressing it rather involves a model-based approach to the process. Not to mention the language-forming capabilities afforded by diagrams, dicisigns, and icons. Peirce himself robustly exploited diagrammatic aspects of reasoning in his own research on logic: his invention of existential graphs is very well-known.
- 9.
Cf. the article “The proper treatment of hypotheses: a preliminary chapter, toward an examination of Hume’s argument against miracles, in its logic and in its history” [1901] (in Peirce 1966, p. 692).
- 10.
Although the notion of representation can be philosophically considered as “emptied” to a certain extent, I decided to maintain it for two main reasons: the contingent one, is to adhere to Millikan’s authoritative lexicon as far as animal cognition is concerned; the more essential one is that this reflection belongs to the model-based reasoning framework, by which a model is used in order to achieve a goal. Representations, as models, do represent a target, and even if the same process can be conveyed by concepts such as “structural coupling of inner and outer systems,” I feel that the notion of representation better depicts its instrumental role.
- 11.
“An economy is an ecology for the generation and distribution of wealth. A cognitive economy is an ecology for the generation and distribution of knowledge” (Woods 2013, p. 85).
- 12.
I need to specify here that the idea of dark knowledge (Woods 2013) or knowledge in the cognitive down-below has nothing to do with frequency of occurrence. Dark knowledge events aren’t dark events in the Maeno and Ohsawa sense.
- 13.
The connection between abduction and affordances in chance discovery based curation has been significantly developed by Abe et al. (2006).
- 14.
“A mass of facts is before us. We go through them. We examine them. We find them a confused snarl, an impenetrable jungle. We are unable to hold them in our minds. [...] But suddenly, while we are poring over our digest of the facts and are endeavoring to set them into order, it occurs to us that if we were to assume something to be true that we do not know to be true, these facts would arrange themselves luminously. That is abduction [...]”. Cf. “Pragmatism as the logic of abduction”, in Peirce (1998, pp. 227–241), the quotation is from footnote 12, pp. 531–532.
- 15.
Cf. the aforementioned brief explanation of the epistemological framework comprehending “theoretical” and “manipulative” abduction.
- 16.
The inferential activity carried out by a detective (who is indeed a chance-discoverer) perfectly embodies the type/token difference, as one might have to individuate the culprit within a set number of suspects, or he might have no suspect at all and thus be forced to assemble a group of suspects. In this case, the abductive reasoning is still selective inasmuch as in the first case the detective must select with a series of tokens, i.e. a number of human beings, while in the second he still has to select his suspect within a type which is still composed of human beings. The detective’s abductions would become creative were he has to postulate a radically different cause for the mishap, shifting the type of culprits for instance from human beings to a sudden chance in atmospheric conditions which led to unusual physical consequences. Indeed, the procedures exemplified by Maeno and Ohsawa (2007) are meant to individuate the dark events within a computationally well-defined tokens belonging to a same type, for instance human beings within a command line or consumable items in a marketing investigation.
- 17.
As contended by Magnani (2013), if we say that truth can be reached through a “simple” abduction (both selective or creative) where simple means that it does not involving an evaluation phase, which coincides with the whole inference to the best explanation, fortified by an empirical evaluation, then it seems we confront a manifest incoherence. In this perspective it is contended that even a simple abduction can provide truth, even if it is epistemically “inert” from the empirical perspective. Why? We can solve the incoherence by observing that we should be compelled to consider abduction as ignorance-preserving only if we consider the empirical test the only way of conferring truth to a hypothetical knowledge content. This clause being accepted, in the framework of the formal model of abduction introduced above the ignorance preservation appears natural and unquestionable. However, if we admit that there are ways to accept a hypothetical knowledge content different from the empirical test, simple abduction is not necessarily constitutively ignorance-preserving: in the end we are dealing with a disagreement about the nature of knowledge, as Woods himself contends. Those who consider abduction as an inference to the best explanation—that is as a truth conferring achievement involving empirical evaluation—obviously cannot consider abductive inference as ignorance-preserving. Those who consider abduction as a mere activity of guessing are more inclined to accept its ignorance-preserving character.
- 18.
This process is very similar to the shift between epistemic bubbles exposed by Woods (2005), but a thorough analysis of this correspondence would transcend the scope of this chapter, and could rather become the object of a future study.
- 19.
This kind of abductive generation of a new chance-system reflects in its gestalt-switch-likeness Peirce’s conception of abduction as akin to truth (Peirce 1931–1958, 7.220), a statement embedded with a nearly mystical value that has to be necessarily balanced with Peirce’s pragmatic (non-metaphysical) conception of truth as “the opinion which is fated to be agreed to by all who investigate.”
- 20.
Even if the issue is clearly related to the topic at stake, I am not especially dealing with the pragmatic relationship between ignorance and courses of action where ignorance can be a synonym of uncertainty, as in the case of economics. A specific investigation about that is due soon, setting off from some reflections introduced in this chapter.
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Arfini, S. (2019). Abduction: Enhancing Knowledge with an Ignorance-Based Reasoning. In: Ignorant Cognition. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14362-6_7
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