Monthly Archives: April 2022

Inquiry and Analogy • Dewey’s “Sign of Rain” • An Example of Inquiry To illustrate the role of sign relations in inquiry we begin with Dewey’s elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday life. A man is walking … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Peirce’s Formulation of Analogy • Version 2 C.S. Peirce • “A Theory of Probable Inference” (1883) The formula of the analogical inference presents, therefore, three premisses, thus: are a random sample of some undefined class of … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Peirce’s Formulation of Analogy • Version 1 C.S. Peirce • “On the Natural Classification of Arguments” (1867) The formula of analogy is as follows: are taken at random from such a class that their characters at … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Aristotle’s “Paradigm” • Reasoning by Analogy Aristotle examines the subject of analogical inference or “reasoning by example” under the heading of the Greek word παραδειγμα, from which comes the English word paradigm.  In its original sense … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Aristotle’s “Apagogy” • Abductive Reasoning Peirce’s notion of abductive reasoning is derived from Aristotle’s treatment of it in the Prior Analytics.  Aristotle’s discussion begins with an example which may seem incidental but the question and its … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Comparison of the Analyses The next two Figures will be of use when we turn to comparing the three types of inference as they appear in the respective analyses of Aristotle and Peirce. Types of Reasoning … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Three Types of Reasoning Types of Reasoning in C.S. Peirce Peirce gives one of his earliest treatments of the three types of reasoning in his Harvard Lectures of 1865 “On the Logic of Science”.  There he … Continue reading →

Inquiry and Analogy • Three Types of Reasoning Types of Reasoning in Aristotle Figure 1 gives a quick overview of traditional terminology I’ll have occasion to refer to as discussion proceeds. Resources Logic Syllabus Boolean Function Boolean-Valued Function Logical Conjunction … Continue reading →