Abstract
Like Peirce, Piaget posits that the type of problem-solving truly retrospective in nature is embedded in action schemes (Empirical and Pseudoempirical Abstraction), inducing increasingly diverse courses of action, and spontaneous explanations. Piaget insists that working from the consequence to determine the premises (Retroactive Reasoning) represents a formidable means to develop viable hypotheses which rest upon the means to reverse and compensate in novel ways. He accounts for amplified social and logical reasoning in the face of unexpected consequences (Reflecting/Reflected Abstraction), when reasoning extends beyond present appearances to incorporate diverse orientations, e.g., changes in event participants’ location/orientation and object motility/dimension modifications, e.g., changes in mass do not automatically result in form alterations. Children propose arguments (identity, reversibility, compensation), illustrating objective explanations for changes in appearances. Afterward, children assert others’ epistemic, and deontic idiosyncrasies (as bystanders). This form of Reflected Abstraction unequivocally demonstrates modal logic; it is free from perceptual constraints. These perspective-taking competencies ultimately trigger well-founded recommendations for diverse courses of action in would-be events (West 2014a; West 2014b), representing Piaget’s commitment to germinating plausible hypotheses. For Peirce, recommending courses of action independent of experiencing them (MS 637: 1909) embodies his pragmatic maxim.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Gopnik (2009: 27) even prior to using language children (before 1;6) engage in pretend behaviors, imagining “the ways things might be different.” Gopnik cites to such displays of conduct as, combing hair with a pencil; or substituting a block for a car in transit. These behaviors demonstrate implicit, novel hypotheses about similar functions across objects, suggesting that one object might be substituted for another in a similar context. Here children infer, prior to the onset of language, that one object can be employed in similar fashion to another. Although explicit rationale is not offered to explain what contributes to the effectiveness of the comb, for example, to tidy the hair, the inference, nonetheless, qualifies as an abduction—a reasonable hunch about what might contribute to or produce a surprising consequence, tidy hair via pencil strokes.
- 2.
It is obvious that Peirce did not intend his model to derive primarily from logic but from semiotic and pragmatic principles, in that he explicitly dispelled the fact that his model is “in the world of formal logic” (1905: MS 1134: 3). This claim is supported by a recent article by Bellucci: “That the science of logic is better considered as Semeiotic…is indeed one of the most fundamental tenets of Peirce’s mature philosophy of logic” (2014: 524).
- 3.
“The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’ It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops” (1885: EP 1: 226).
- 4.
“Of this nature are all natural signs and physical symptoms. I call such a sign an index, a pointing finger being the type of the class” (1885: EP 1: 226).
- 5.
“That hardness, that compulsiveness of experience, is Secondness” (1903: EP 2: 268).
- 6.
“A door is slightly ajar. You try to open it. Something prevents. You put your shoulder against it, and experience a sense of effort and a sense of resistance. These are not two forms of consciousness; they are two aspects of one two-sided consciousness. It is inconceivable that there should be any effort without resistance, or any resistance without a contrary effort” (1903: EP 2: 268).
- 7.
“Error and ignorance, I may remark, are all that distinguish our private selves from the absolute ego” (1867–1871: 169).
- 8.
In his 1908 draft letter to Victoria, Lady Welby, Peirce identifies the “Percussive” interpretant as bearing the element of Secondness in his sixth trichotomy—“Of the Nature of the Dynamic Interpretant” (1908: EP 2: 490). West (2013: 114) elaborates on this with the assertion that, “the Percussive [interpretant] gives rise to a sudden, single, emotional experience.”
- 9.
The following passage from Peirce from his later writings reveals the foundational place of retroduction in developing logic and representational thinking: “I consider Retroduction…to be the most important kind of reasoning, notwithstanding its very unreliable nature, because it is the only kind of reasoning that opens up new ground. [—] Retroduction gives hints that come straight from our dear and adorable Creator. We ought to labour to cultivate this Divine privilege. It is the side of human intellect that is exposed to influence from on high. With this investigation starts. Having once formed a conjecture, the first thing to be done is to draw Deductions from it and compare them with observations 1911: NEM 3:206.
- 10.
In making the argument regarding reversibility, Piaget refers directly to Peirce’s notion of retroduction as one form (albeit primary) of retroductive inference/implication: “…action implications, just as implications between statements, may take three forms: (1) a “proactive” form (which Peirce called “predictive”), in which case A → B means that B is a new consequence derived from A; (2) a retroactive form (which Peirce called “retrodictive”[sic]), according to which B implies A as a preliminary condition; and (3) a justifying form, which relates (1) and (2) through necessary connections that thus attain the status of “reasons” (Piaget and Garcia 1980/1987/1991: 121). Piaget (1981/1986: 57) likewise connects the retroactive with the proactive in view of “possibilities already realized before the task.”
- 11.
Perspective-taking for Piaget presumes projective relations in that: “Projective space…begins psychologically at the point when the object or pattern is no longer viewed in isolation, but begins to be considered in relation to a ‘point of view.’ This is either the viewpoint of the subject, in which case a perspective relationship is involved, or else that of other objects on which the first is projected” (Piaget and Inhelder 1948/1967: 153–154).
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West, D.E. (2016). The Ontogeny of Retroactive Inference: Piagetian and Peircean Accounts. In: Magnani, L., Casadio, C. (eds) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38983-7_19
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