5 ideas
14790 | 'Abduction' is beginning a hypothesis, particularly if it includes preference of one explanation over others [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The first starting of a hypothesis and the entertaining of it …is an inferential step which I propose to call 'abduction'. This will include a preference for any one hypothesis over others which would equally explain the facts. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Abduction and Induction [1901], I) | |
A reaction: I take there to be no more important function within human thought than the procedure by which we give preference to one particular explanation. It only makes sense, I think, if we take it as part of a coherence theory of justification. |
14791 | Abduction involves original suggestions, and not just the testing involved in induction [Peirce] |
Full Idea: It is of the nature of abduction to involve an original suggestion; while typical induction has no originality in it, but only tests a suggestion already made. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Abduction and Induction [1901], I) | |
A reaction: Peirce's 'abduction' is not, then, just the choice of a best explanation. He came up with the idea because he was keen to capture the creative and imaginative character of rational thought. |
23688 | Noncognitivism tries to avoid both naturalism and mysterious morality [Hacker-Wright] |
Full Idea: Noncognitivism is an attempt to avoid the alleged problems of naturalism without the mysteries of Moore's non-naturalism. | |
From: John Hacker-Wright (Philippa Foot's Moral Thought [2013], 1) | |
A reaction: R.M. Hare is the best example of this approach. Moore's Open Question argument was said to prove the Naturalistic Fallacy, which imagined that morality could be a feature of nature. It led Moore to platonism. I prefer Philippa Foot. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |