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The Bizarre Story of How Cigars Helped to Create a Major Branch of Logic

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
A True Story

Charlie was born in 1839. His father, Benjamin, was a Harvard professor and considered the leading American mathematician of his day. Naturally, Charlie could not have known the day he was born what his father's plans for him were.

Had he known his father's plans, he probably would have crawled back into his mother's womb and zipped it shut.

You see, Benjamin -- in addition to being a mathematician -- harbored an almost fanatic desire to see to it that his son Charlie was capable of thinking logically. That by itself wasn't such a bad thing, but Benjamin was also committed to teaching Charlie not only to think logically, but to think logically no matter how stressed out Charlie was. Which again, was not such a bad thing --- except for one fact.

Benjamin smoked cigars.

All the while Charlie was growing up, Benjamin would routinely demand that Charlie play cards with him in order to teach Charlie logic. That is, in order to teach him how to logically figure out which cards his opponent was holding so that he could then beat his opponent. That would have been enough for most fathers, but not for Benjamin. To stress Charlie out, Benjamin would keep him up late playing cards until Charlie would at last drop off from sheer exhaustion, and could no longer be shaken awake for another hand.

And to further stress Charlie out, Benjamin would blow cigar smoke in Charlie's face through-out the card games while accepting no excuses if and when Charlie committed an error in logical reasoning.

As you might expect, Charlie grew up to become a radical anarchist hellbent on firebombing cigar stores.

Actually, Charlie grew up to arguably become America's greatest logician. Some even call him "one of the greatest philosophers ever". We cannot know for certain the extent to which Benjamin's fiendish tactics shaped Charlie as a logician, but Charlie certainly turned out to be everything his father desired -- and perhaps more.

Abduction

Charlie's full name was Charles Sanders Peirce. He was a polymath who made important contributions not just to the field of logic, but to the fields of mathematics, scientific methodology, semiotics, and philosophy in general. He is known as the father of an entire school of philosophy, Pragmatism. But in this context, his most important intellectual contribution was his discovery of a major branch of logic.

Until Peirce came along, there were only two major branches of logic -- deduction and induction. He discovered the third -- abduction. Abduction just might be the most common, everyday form of human reasoning there is, but -- strange as it might sound -- no one had noticed that it involves a distinct kind of logical thinking until Peirce came along.

Each of the three major branches of logic involves a distinct way of reasoning. To grossly simplify things, both deduction and induction are ways of reasoning from cause to effect. But abduction is a way of reasoning "backwards" -- from effect to cause. That's by no means all of it, but it's an easy way to distinguish abduction from the other two.

Abduction is used by most of us more often than we use both deduction and induction -- we just do it so naturally that we are most often consciously unaware of doing it.

For instance, suppose you come home from work and notice your neighbor's yard is freshly mowed. Further suppose you know that your neighbor usually has his yard mowed by someone named Brandon. You might in those circumstances adduce that Brandon recently mowed your neighbor's yard. Notice you are reasoning from an effect (the mowed yard) back to a cause (Brandon mowing the yard).

For the most part, whenever we ascribe a motive to someone, we are adducing the motive. Our mother tells us we're "good looking". We adduce she's saying it because she loves us, and we further adduce she is not entirely objective about our being good looking.

Yet, abduction probably gets far, far more subtle -- and commonplace -- than that. It is arguable that we routinely adduce the existence of discrete things and objects on an unconscious level. That is, without consciously adducing them. Consider that psychology tells us newborn babies for the most part experience the world only as a mess of sensations. They might not at first even see shapes! Just a very blurry world in which, say, round and square objects appear more or less the same.

However, as time goes by, babies adduce objects out of the mess of sensations. One set of blurs become to them their mother's face, while another set of blurs becomes a milk bottle. Sounds become distinct from smells, and so forth. By the time they become conscious around the age of three, they are more or less fully aware of the world as meaningful objects, rather than mere sensations. Put differently, they have learned to adduce the causes of various different sensations, and to think of those causes as objects or discrete things.

No Guarantees

Abductive reasoning does NOT guarantee that the conclusion we arrive at is true. It at best makes the conclusion probable or "most likely". Logicians often refer to abduction as "inference to the best explanation". That is, as a means of reasoning from a set of observations to the best explanation for those observations -- the most likely cause of them.

Questions? Comments?

______________________________________
Note: Technically -- very technically -- the first mention of an abductive argument was made by Aristotle. But his mention of a case of abductive reasoning was so inconsequential that I do not credit him with discovering the branch. That is, so far as I know, he did not recognize abduction as a separate and distinct branch of logic, nor did anyone who came after him until Peirce.
 
Last edited:

Yerda

Veteran Member
Questions? Comments?
That was really good, thanks.

I've only ever read deductive logic (and even then only the simple stuff, PL and QL mostly). Where, in your opinion, is a good place to get an intro to abductive logic/reasoning?
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
That was really good, thanks.

I've only ever read deductive logic (and even then only the simple stuff, PL and QL mostly). Where, in your opinion, is a good place to get an intro to abductive logic/reasoning?


I haven't read this book, but I have heard that it's a good one: Inference to the Best Explanation. by Peter Lipton. London: Routledge, 2001.

Online, the best source I can find for an introduction to abduction has been the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The problem is, it's a little bit hard to read. Yet, the easier sources I've found don't do a good enough job explaining it -- in my opinion.

Here's the Stanford article: Abduction (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
 

shmogie

Well-Known Member
A True Story

Charlie was born in 1839. His father, Benjamin, was a Harvard professor and considered the leading American mathematician of his day. Naturally, Charlie could not have known the day he was born what his father's plans for him were.

Had he known his father's plans, he probably would have crawled back into his mother's womb and zipped it shut.

You see, Benjamin -- in addition to being a mathematician -- harbored an almost fanatic desire to see to it that his son Charlie was capable of thinking logically. That by itself wasn't such a bad thing, but Benjamin was also committed to teaching Charlie not only to think logically, but to think logically no matter how stressed out Charlie was. Which again, was not such a bad thing --- except for one fact.

Benjamin smoked cigars.

All the while Charlie was growing up, Benjamin would routinely demand that Charlie play cards with him in order to teach Charlie logic. That is, in order to teach him how to logically figure out which cards his opponent was holding so that he could then beat his opponent. That would have been enough for most fathers, but not for Benjamin. To stress Charlie out, Benjamin would keep him up late playing cards until Charlie would at last drop off from sheer exhaustion, and could no longer be shaken awake for another hand.

And to further stress Charlie out, Benjamin would blow cigar smoke in Charlie's face through-out the card games while accepting no excuses if and when Charlie committed an error in logical reasoning.

As you might expect, Charlie grew up to become a radical anarchist hellbent on firebombing cigar stores.

Actually, Charlie grew up to arguably become America's greatest logician. Some even call him "one of the greatest philosophers ever". We cannot know for certain the extent to which Benjamin's fiendish tactics shaped Charlie as a logician, but Charlie certainly turned out to be everything his father desired -- and perhaps more.

Abduction

Charlie's full name was Charles Sanders Peirce. He was a polymath who made important contributions not just to the field of logic, but to the fields of mathematics, scientific methodology, semiotics, and philosophy in general. He is known as the father of an entire school of philosophy, Pragmatism. But in this context, his most important intellectual contribution was his discovery of a major branch of logic.

Until Peirce came along, there were only two major branches of logic -- deduction and induction. He discovered the third -- abduction. Abduction just might be the most common, everyday form of human reasoning there is, but -- strange as it might sound -- no one had noticed that it involves a distinct kind of logical thinking until Peirce came along.

Each of the three major branches of logic involves a distinct way of reasoning. To grossly simplify things, both deduction and induction are ways of reasoning from cause to effect. But abduction is a way of reasoning "backwards" -- from effect to cause. That's by no means all of it, but it's an easy way to distinguish abduction from the other two.

Abduction is used by most of us more often than we use both deduction and induction -- we just do it so naturally that we are most often consciously unaware of doing it.

For instance, suppose you come home from work and notice your neighbor's yard is freshly mowed. Further suppose you know that your neighbor usually has his yard mowed by someone named Brandon. You might in those circumstances adduce that Brandon recently mowed your neighbor's yard. Notice you are reasoning from an effect (the mowed yard) back to a cause (Brandon mowing the yard).

For the most part, whenever we ascribe a motive to someone, we are adducing the motive. Our mother tells us we're "good looking". We adduce she's saying it because she loves us, and we further adduce she is not entirely objective about our being good looking.

Yet, abduction probably gets far, far more subtle -- and commonplace -- than that. It is arguable that we routinely adduce the existence of discrete things and objects on an unconscious level. That is, without consciously adducing them. Consider that psychology tells us newborn babies for the most part experience the world only as a mess of sensations. They might not at first even see shapes! Just a very blurry world in which, say, round and square objects appear more or less the same.

However, as time goes by, babies adduce objects out of the mess of sensations. One set of blurs become to them their mother's face, while another set of blurs becomes a milk bottle. Sounds become distinct from smells, and so forth. By the time they become conscious around the age of three, they are more or less fully aware of the world as meaningful objects, rather than mere sensations. Put differently, they have learned to adduce the causes of various different sensations, and to think of those causes as objects or discrete things.

No Guarantees

Abductive reasoning does NOT guarantee that the conclusion we arrive at is true. It at best makes the conclusion probable or "most likely". Logicians often refer to abduction as "inference to the best explanation". That is, as a means of reasoning from a set of observations to the best explanation for those observations -- the most likely cause of them.

Questions? Comments?

______________________________________
Note: Technically -- very technically -- the first mention of an abductive argument was made by Aristotle. But his mention of a case of abductive reasoning was so inconsequential that I do not credit him with discovering the branch. That is, so far as I know, he did not recognize abduction as a separate and distinct branch of logic, nor did anyone who came after him until Peirce.
Very informative, thank you
 
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