Category Archives: Analogy

Re: Beyond Experiment • Scott Church Names are not important of course, except for the purpose of communication.  The important thing is for us to distinguish hypothesis formation from hypothesis evaluation.  Now, there happens to be a long tradition of … Continue reading →

Re: Beyond Experiment • Scott Church Let me just say again that abduction is not “inference to the best explanation”.  That gloss derives from a later attempt to rationalize Peirce’s idea and it has led to a whole literature of … Continue reading →

Re: Peter Woit • Beyond Experiment I have no horse in this race (cat in this box?) as far as multiverses and polycosmoi go.  I will limit myself to clearing up popular confusions about Peirce’s concept of abductive inference. Analytic philosophy … Continue reading →

Re: Peter Woit • Beyond Experiment The phrase “inference to the best explanation” was coined by Gilbert Harman in his attempt to explain abductive inference but it conveys the wrong impression to anyone who takes it as a substitute for … Continue reading →

Re: Peter Woit • Beyond Experiment There is a lot of misunderstanding about the requirement of falsifiability.  At root it is simply the idea that an empirical law is not a logical tautology.  I don’t see any reason to dispense … Continue reading →

Re: Peter Woit • Beyond Experiment Peirce is simply describing the process by which we seize on an initial hypothesis or model.  That choice will in practice be influenced by all sorts of previous experiences with the phenomenon in question … Continue reading →