2005. abduction and the semiotics of perception

Abduction and the semiotics of perception

CLAUDINE TIERCELIN

From H. Helmholtz describing perception as involving unconscious in-

ferences (Helmholtz 1867) to R. L. Gregory claiming that perceptions

simply are hypotheses (Gregory 1973, 1994), many philosophers and sci-

entists have stressed the links between perception and some form or otherof hypothesis. But very few have undertaken to clarify the epistemologi-

cal status of hypothesis itself or to wonder whether that might have some

bearing on the correct understanding of perception itself.

C. S. Peirce was undoubtedly one of them: not only did he connect

perception and hypothesis (which he baptized ‘abduction’), but, with his

categories (conceived as logical, semiotical, phenomenological, and meta-

physical tools), he o¤ered an enlightening analysis of such a link, and in

so doing, of both processes.In what follows, I shall present the most salient aspects of Peirce’s

approach and try to show also in what respect they may clarify his posi-

tion as regards his supposedly ‘direct’ (Reidian) or ‘natural’ (Putnamian)

realism and even provide clues to some di‰culties which perception and

abduction themselves still have to face.

1. Perception as abduction: The evolution

In the Cambridge Lectures on Pragmatism of 1903, Peirce defines prag-

matism as ‘the logic of abduction’ and proposes a detailed analysis of

the relationships between perception and abduction. To a certain extent,

perception is so close to abduction that both processes seem almost indis-

tinguishable, having more to do, at least, with a ‘shading o¤ ’ or ‘grada-

tion’ than with a full-fledged distinction. But why is that so?

Peirce’s earliest writings (1865–1868) develop views reminiscent, asfar as the inferential character of perception is concerned, of Berkeley’s

‘extraordinary piece of reasoning’ (W 2: 484) as developed in his New

Theory of Vision (1709) (Tiercelin 1984: 411) and more generally of

Semiotica 153–1/4 (2005), 389–412 0037–1998/05/0153–0389

6 Walter de Gruyter

Helmholtz’s Physiological Optics. In the three articles of 1868, Peirce

interprets perception, from top to bottom, as an inferential and hypothet-

ical process: he refuses to admit first premisses such as sense data, impres-

sions or intuitions (i.e., cognitions not determined by previous cogni-

tions). Not only is space known by inference (and not immediately seen)

(W 2: 197), but it is hard to distinguish dream from reality (W 2: 196).

Everything we know about the internal — even sensations and emotions,e.g., anger (W 2: 206) — is ‘derived by hypothetical reasoning from our

knowledge of external facts’ (W 2: 213). However, if abduction already

plays the role of an explanatory hypothesis of ‘what passes within us,’

‘necessary to explain what takes place in what we commonly call the ex-

ternal world’ (W 2: 213) and to avoid inconceivability, it is still mainly

viewed as an evidencing process of one general (syllogistic) type (Fann

1970: 19), a reduction of a manifold to unity, not irreducibly di¤erent

from induction or deduction (W 2: 218).When Peirce interprets perception as partly identical with an abductive

process in 1903, his views about both perception and abduction (and on

inference in general) have considerably evolved. Many of his earlier views

have not changed: there are no data (CP 7.465), no images in perception

(CP 5.303), ‘no facts which prove that there is never the least vagueness in

the immediate sensation . . . when I see a thing, I do not see that it is not

sweet, nor do I see that it is sweet’ (CP 3.93, 5.306); immediate simplicity

(of impressions, sensations, even colours) is a pure illusion (CP 7.376); thefrontier between the internal and the external is fuzzy (CP 7.438), and

amounts mainly to a di¤erence in perspective, not in nature, while on the

other hand, there is an irreducibly ontological (and logical) ‘disparate-

ness’ (CP 7.631) between the percept itself and the perceptual content

(now called ‘percipuum’) such as is immediately present in and propositio-

nally expressed by the perceptual judgment: the judgment in no way re-

sembles the percept nor is a copy of it (W 2: 484; CP 1.538, 7.634; EP 2:

191). Indeed, the statement: ‘that chair is yellow’ would be more accu-rately represented by a pointing index taking the place of the subject

(CP 7.635, 8.41). Moreover, since the percept makes no assertion, and is

not a proposition, it cannot (any more than a hallucination) be false (CP

7.658; EP 2: 195). But for the same reason, one should carefully distin-

guish what is for us (perceptual judgments having icons as their predi-

cates) and what is in nature (‘the independent uncaused elements of fact

that go to make up the variety of nature’), which we can only ‘imagine’

by comparing their respective premisses (EP 2: 194).However, since the 1880s at least, as appears in the review of Royce’s

The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Peirce has tried to limit his earlier

idealistic tendencies (W 2: 208, 270) about the relations between thought

390 C. Tiercelin

and reality (Hookway 2002: 96), and most of all, has now other (semi-

otic) ways of explaining those relations — and what is presented as a di-

rect perceptual awareness of independent external things, ‘not inside our

skulls, but out in the open’ (CP 8.144), — than through the mediation of

concepts and descriptions (W 4: 250). Such new ways are a¤orded by an

enlarged definition of logic no longer viewed through the syllogistic prism

but through the logic of relations and the semiotic framework, which,among other things, covers Critic but also Speculative Grammar, Rheto-

ric or Methodeutic and provides, beside symbols, such powerful tools as

indices (CP 3.361–3.363) and icons (Tiercelin 1993b: 143–148). What is

most important now is to underline the external pressure, forcefulness,

‘percussivity’ (NEM 318), or reactive role of Secondness (CP 7.620), the

‘dumbness’ (CP 7.622) of the percept, which makes ‘no professions of any

kind’ (CP 7.619) but ‘obtrudes itself upon me in its entirety’ (CP 7.624,

7.643) and the uncontrollable (EP 2: 191), ‘unreasonable,’ but for thatvery reason, acritical situation in which the perceiver finds himself (CP

7.643; EP 2: 191). Paradoxically, but to a certain extent only (Hookway

1986), whereas Peirce had begun as an anti-foundationalist, he now seems

ready to view the perceptual judgement as (although, it is true, only de

facto) ‘the starting-point or first premise of all critical and controlled

thinking’ (CP 5.181). ‘Logical criticism cannot go beyond perceptual facts

which are the first judgments which we make concerning percepts’ (CP

7.198).At first sight, such an adoption of an ‘immediate theory of perception’

(in the explicit footsteps of Thomas Reid and Kant) (CP 7.639; 8.261)

should go together with a more limited attention to the mediate and infer-

ential aspects of perception, hence, of abduction (at least as previously

defined). However, such is not at all the case, for several reasons, one of

which is the evolution abduction itself undergoes as early as 1883: first, it

is no longer viewed as a mere evidencing or justification process aiming at

certainty, but more and more as a methodological process involved in thecontext of inquiry (Fann 1970: 23–38) and in particular, as N. Hanson

has shown, in the discovery part of it (functioning as an original ‘method

of invention’ in search of the ‘method of methods’ [CP 7.59, 2.107–

2.108]). Second, Peirce is now stressing both the reactiveness, indexical

Secondness and qualitative, iconic or may-be Firstness of abduction itself,

defining it as a guessing power capable of Insights while still remaining

inferential, though in a way now — intended at least as — autonomous

(Kapitan 1990, 1997), or irreducible to both induction and deduction;while these two also benefit from the enriched definition made possible

by the logic of relations and by the finely grained semiotic categories

which, in particular, underline the importance of icons and diagrams in

Abduction and semiotics of perception 391

deduction and specify the self-correcting role of induction within the gen-

eral aiming-at-truth context of inquiry.

All of this helps to explain why, in the Cambridge Lectures of 1903,

Peirce continues to see no contradiction in stressing the links between per-

ception and abduction, and goes even so far as to present perception as

‘the extremest case of abductive judgment’. But such links have now a dif-

ferent meaning.

2. Categories, realism, and the semiotics of perception

As P. Turrisi (1990) has convincingly argued, it is impossible to get aclear view of Peirce’s conception on these issues, and in particular of the

way he deals ‘with the issue of an abductive origination of innovative hy-

potheses,’ if one does not bear in mind his commitment to a special form

of realism presupposing three irreducible categories: quality, reaction and

mediation. ‘Abductive method in this explanation, is a ‘‘system of ques-

tions,’’ an application of the logic of categoric relations in the structure

of a particular fact of perception’ (Turrisi 1990: 465). In terms of semiotic

and/or phaneroscopy, it means the following:

1. All three categories (Firstness: pure qualitative, idiosyncratic Feeling,

detached Possibility; Secondness: brute Reaction, existence, physio-

logical force, surprising Experience; Thirdness: Mediation, Repre-sentation, Intelligence, Generality), while being irreducible to one

another and distinct (CP 5.44, 6.222–6.224, 1.357, 8.281), never ob-

servable as such but cognizable only through precisive abstraction

and as the products of some form or other of logical reflexion (CP

5.369, 7.624), are always found together and united in experience

(CP 5.292, 7.392, 7.631; Tiercelin 1993b: 134–162). It is equally im-

portant to show the ‘distinctiveness’ and the ‘essential correlation’ of

Quality, Reaction and Representation (EP 2: 179).2. Although Thirdness is both irreducible and in the end, the one cate-

gory in the absence of which the other two could not be fully accom-

plished, Firstness and Secondness are never reduced by or even less to

Thirdness (Tiercelin 1993b: 155). They remain full-fledged constitu-

ents of the Real. Qualities play their role in the economy of the Uni-

verse (EP 2: 192–193). And so do Reactions (EP 2: 194 ¤.). It is,

among other things, such impossible Aufhebung, Peirce claims, which

separates him from Hegel (CP 5.90–5.92, 4.318, 5.436).3. However, it is particularly decisive for Peirce’s ‘Aristotelianism, ap-

proaching Scotism, but going much further in the direction of scho-

lastic realism’ (EP 2: 180) to show that ‘general principles are really

392 C. Tiercelin

operative in Nature’ (EP 2: 181, 183), and that Thirdness ‘ ‘‘pours in’’

upon one’s mind through every avenue of sense,’ hence already at the

level of Firstness and Secondness (EP 2: 211, 207). This is one of the

reasons why, for example, odors have ‘a remarkable power of calling

to mind mental and spiritual qualities’ (CP 1.313) or why we cannot

spend five minutes of our waking life without making some kind of

prediction (CP 1.26).

3. Perception as ‘the extremest case of abductive judgment’

As a consequence, three ‘cotary propositions’ are defended, ‘in the light

of which only, the true characteristics of pragmatism are fully displayed’

(EP 2: 224):

1. ‘Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses,’ so that a

perceptual judgement, is indeed, the starting point of all reasoning

and knowledge (EP 2: 227); but it becomes just as crucial — in order

to avoid the first option rendered possible by this first proposition that‘all our ideas are perceptual ideas,’ namely: Sensationalism (EP 2:

223), — to demonstrate two other propositions, i.e., that

2. perceptual judgments contain general elements (EP 2: 223–224) and

that

3. ‘abductive inference shades into perceptual judgments without any

sharp line of demarcation between them’ so that ‘our first premisses,

the perceptual judgments are to be regarded as an extreme case of ab-

ductive inferences . . .’ (ibid.); or that, in other words, ‘the abductivefaculty, by which we divine the secrets of nature, is, as we may say,

a shading o¤, a gradation of that which in its highest perfection we

call perception’ (EP 2: 224).

Such true connecting links between abductions and perceptions, mid-

way between a seeing and a thinking, are illustrated via several examples

and experiences: first, optical illusions such as the serpentine line (an ex-

ample borrowed from his father) which, when completely drawn, appears

to be a stone wall, or the well-known unshaded outline figure of a pair of

steps seen in perspective — the Schroeder’s staircase — in which ‘we seem

at first to be looking at the steps from above; but some unconscious part of

the mind seems to tire of putting that construction upon it and suddenlywe seem to see the steps from below, and so the perceptive judgment

and the percept itself seem to keep shifting from one general aspect to

the other and back again’ (EP 2: 228, emphasis added). In such cases,


‘the point is that there are two ways of conceving the matter’, both being

‘general ways of classing the line, general classes under which the line

is subsumed. But the very decided preference of our perception for one

mode of classing the percept shows that this classification is contained in

the perceptual judgment’ (ibid.).

But Peirce alludes to a second slightly di¤erent class of phenomena, not

pertaining to mere optical illusions but which seem to involve both ourconstitution as a natural tendency to interpret and some intentional char-

acteristics of the objects themselves. Such are

the whole series of hypnotic phenomena, of which so many fall within the realm

of ordinary everyday observation — such as our waking up at the hour we wish to

wake much nearer than our waking selves could guess it, involve the fact that we

perceive what we are adjusted for interpreting though it be far less perceptible than

any express e¤ort could enable us to perceive; while that to the interpretation of

which our adjustements are not fitted, we fail to perceive, although it exceed in

intensity what we should perceive with the utmost ease if we cared at all for its

interpretation. It is a marvel to me that my clock in my study strikes every half

hour in the most audible manner, and yet I never hear it. I should not know at

all whether the striking part were going, unless it is out of order and strikes the

wrong hour. If it does that, I am pretty sure to hear it. Another familiar fact is

that we perceive, or seem to perceive, objects di¤erently from how they really

are, accomodating them to their manifest intention. Proofreaders get high salaries

because ordinary people miss seeing misprints, their eyes correcting them. (EP 2:

228, emphasis added)

Finally, there is a third category of experiences which takes us even fur-ther into the ‘thinking’ rather than the ‘seeing’ part of the scale of experi-

ence, namely the following: ‘we can repeat the sense of a conversation but

we are often quite mistaken as to what words were uttered. Some politi-

cians think it a clever thing to convey an idea which they carefully abstain

from stating in words. The result is that a reporter is ready to swear quite

sincerely that a politician said something to him which the politician was

most careful not to say’ (EP 2: 229).

In all three cases, ‘if the percept or perceptual judgment were of a na-ture entirely unrelated to abduction, one would expect that the percept

would be entirely free from any characters that are proper to interpreta-

tions, while it can hardly fail to have such characters if it be merely a con-

tinuous series of what discretely and consciously performed would be

abductions’ (EP 2: 229). From this, it is easy to conclude that ‘a certain

theory of interpretation of the figure has all the appearance of being given

in perception’ (EP 2: 228) and that ‘nothing is more familiar (especially

to every psychology student) as the interpretativeness of the perceptive

394 C. Tiercelin

judgment. It is plainly nothing but the extremest case of Abductive Judg-

ment’ (EP 2: 229).

It remains to see, first, what such an abductive perception of generality

amounts to, and second, what its abductive logic really is.

4. The abductive perception of generality

In order to understand what the perception of generality consists in, four

things should be noted: 1) it must not be wholly general but must take sin-

gularity into account; 2) singularity itself involves some generality and/or

vagueness; 3) while being, in its first ordinary meaning, of the nature ofpredication and representation, generality is better understood as continu-

ity; 4) the perception of generality is a perception less of general elements

or characters than of general classifications or forms.

1. To a certain extent, Aristole’s definition of generality as ‘that which is

by its nature predicated of a number of things’ is ‘good enough’ since

it just points out that ‘all ordinary judgments contain a predicate and

that this predicate is general’ (EP 2: 208). Translated in the terms of

the Logic of Relations, it means that ‘a proposition may have any

number of subjects but can have but one predicate which is invariably

general’ (ibid.). But as the structure of the proposition shows, and un-

less ‘uttering an absurdity,’ one must also take account of the pres-ence of its subject(s), in other words, of the singular: ‘That which is

not general is singular; and the singular is that which reacts’ (EP 2:

209). Now it should be clear that ‘reaction is existence’ and that ‘the

perceptual judgment is the cognitive product of a reaction’ (EP 2: 210,

emphasis added).

2. But singularity must not be thought as totally opposed to generality,

since ‘the being of a singular may consist in the being of other sin-

gulars which are its parts’ (EP 2: 208). As a matter of fact: ‘All prop-ositions relate to the same ever-reacting singular: namely, to the to-

tality of all real objects’ (EP 2: 209). This is due to the fact that

singulars are always pseudo-singulars: Philip is always capable of log-

ical division into Philip drunk and Philip sober (CP 3.93). Even such

names as Theodore Roosevelt, which it is convenient to regard as sin-

gulars are a mixture of ‘hazy recollections’ of all kinds of perceptual

experiences which have ‘led me semi-instinctively to suppose that one

person preserving an identity through the continuity of space, time,character, memory, etc., has been one singular connected with all

these phenomena; and though I have not made any formal induction

to test this theory, yet my impression is that I am in possession of


[an] abundance of facts that would support such an induction quite

irresistibly . . . . The notion that all those reacting singulars were in

the relation of personal identity to one another, and that their sepa-

rate singularities consist in a connection to a singular, the collection

of them all, this notion is an element of Thirdness abductively con-

nected with them . . . .’ (EP 2: 222, emphasis added).

Indeed, for Peirce, it is plain that our knowledge of the majority ofgeneral conceptions comes about in a manner altogether analogous

to our knowledge of an individual person (such as, for example, the

general idea of dog; a combination of associations of perceptual expe-

riences common to me and to others, which ‘I have generalized by

abduction chiefly, with small doses of induction’, acquiring thus

‘some general ideas of dogs’ ways, of the laws of caninity, some of

them invariable so far as I have observed, such as his frequent nap-

ping, others merely usual, such as his way of circling when he is pre-paring to take a nap’ and which make me finally encounter the word

dog more like a class than like an individual [EP 2: 221–2]). ‘These

are laws of perceptual judgments, and so beyond all doubt, are the

great majority of our general notions’ (EP 2: 223).

3. Generality must be understood as continuity.

It is now easier to understand why, although generality is correctly

defined as predicative in essence, as Mediation or Representation,

one should prefer the ‘less colored term’ of Thirdness whose ‘sugges-tions are not so narrow and special as those of the word Represen-

tation’ (EP 2: 184): it is because, as is the case with general laws of

nature, it can ‘produce physical e¤ects’ (ibid.), but also because it ‘in-

volves . . . possibilities absolutely beyond all multitude’ (ibid.), which

is another word for continuity. To see how ‘Thirdness ‘‘pours upon’’

us at every avenue of sense,’ it su‰ces, for example, to experience

that ‘whatever the psychical process may be, we seem to perceive a

genuine flow of time, such that instants melt into one another withoutseparate individuality’ (EP 2: 238).

4. But, just as importantly, it is not only ‘every general element of every

hypothesis’ which is initially ‘given somewhere in perception’: we

have to admit that ‘every general form of putting concepts together

is, in its elements, given in perception’ (EP 2: 229; Turrisi 1990: 486).

5. The abductive logic of perception

Peirce is clear that, in claiming that perception contain general ele-

ments, he ‘certainly never intended to be understood as enunciating any

396 C. Tiercelin

proposition in psychology’: he intended to stay on the logical ground (EP

2: 210). And from a such a standpoint, to say that ‘perceptual judgements

contain general elements’ can only mean that it is possible to show that

‘universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner in which

the logic of relations show that particular propositions usually, no to say

invariably, allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from

them’ (EP 2: 227). Indeed, ‘among those opinions which [he has] con-stantly maintained, is this, that while abductive and inductive reasoning

are utterly irreducible, either to the other or to deduction, or deduction

to either of them, yet the only rationale of these methods is essentially de-

ductive or necessary’ (EP 2: 206). Another constantly maintained opinion

is that of inference, as something which is controlled and critical (EP 2:

188), in which one belief not only follows after another, but follows from

it’ (CP 4.53), which produces an ‘acceptance’ of the conclusion in the

mind of the reasoner (CP 2.148), and whose validity (however weak itmay be) implies that whatever appears as a result in the conlusion must

already be present in the premisses.

As all commentators have noted (see Frankfurt 1958; Anderson 1986;

Roth 1988; Kapitan 1990, 1992, 1997; Hintikka 1998), this is one of the

tricky aspects in Peirce’s account of the logic of abduction: how can one

maintain that, in the inference, the abductive result, unless loosing a ‘per-

fectly definite logical form’, should not contain elements foreign to its

premises (EP 2: 231) and yet ensure the specific function (or justification)of abduction, i.e., to be ‘the only logical mechanism which introduces any

new idea’ (EP 2: 205, 216; Kapitan 1990: 499¤.)? Besides, since a novel

hypothesis is said to ‘result from’ an abductive argument (CP 2.96), how

can such hypothesis first emerge in the conclusion of an abduction with-

out the reasoner already assuming that the hypothesis has explanatory

merit? The only way to break the circle is to provide an explanation

which, some way or other, analyzes abduction as emerging in the course

of reasoning itself (Kapitan 1990: 505). Peirce’s claim is that this happensprecisely as soon as one analyzes what goes on as a kind of seeing or

perceiving.

Let us remind the structure of abductive inference:

The surprising fact, C, is observed;

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.

Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. (EP 2: 231)

There is a crucial objection to dismiss: ‘It may be said that granting that

the abductive conclusion ‘‘A is true’’ rests upon the premiss, ‘‘If A is true,

C is a matter of course’’, still it would be contrary to common knowledge


to assert that the antecedents of all conditional judgements are given in

perception, and thus it remains almost certain that some concepts have a

di¤erent origin.’ To this, Peirce has an answer:

. . . The entire logical matter of a conclusion must come from the uncontrolled

part of the mind. But self-control is the character which distinguishes reasonings

from the processes by which perceptual judgments are formed, and self-control of

any kind is purely inhibitory. It originates nothing. Therefore, it cannot be in the

act of adoption of an inference, in the pronouncing of it to be reasonable, that the

formal conceptions in question can first emerge. It must be in the first perceiving

that so one might conceivably reason [emphasis added]. And what is the nature of

that? I see that I have distinctively described the phenomenon as a ‘perceiving.’ I

do not wish to argue from words, but a word may furnish a valuable suggestion.

What can, our first acquaintance with an inference, when it is not yet adopted, be

but a perception of the world of ideas? [emphasis added]. In the first suggestion of

it, the inference must be thought of as an inference, because when it is adopted

there is always the thought that so one might reason in a whole class of cases.

But the mere act of inhibition cannot introduce this conception. The inference

must, then, be thought of as an inference in the first suggestion of it’. (EP 2: 233)

Any inference involves three steps: colligation (or conjoining of distinct

propositions into a whole and itself asserting a result, itself a type of

deductive reasoning [CP 2.442–2.443, 5.579; Kapitan 1990: 500]), obser-

vation ‘the most essential part of reasoning’ (CP 2.605) and judgment,which includes an acceptance that what is observed in the premises yields,

by following a rule, that conclusion, and thereby, an acceptance of the

conclusion itself (CP 7.459, 2.444). Hence it is in the second part of the

inferential process, i.e., the contemplating or observational part, which is

uncontrollable or irresistible (CP 7.555) that abduction suggests itself un-

der the form of the seeing not so much of a general character or feature as

of a generalizing thought (CP 6.146). The reasoner has ‘the thought that

the inferred conclusion is true because in an analogous case an analogousconclusion would be true’ (CP 5.130), which has all the appearance of a

general rule. This is what happens in Peirce’s favorite illustration of the

process, i.e., Kepler’s discovery of elliptical orbits (CP 2.96). As Kapitan

rightly notes,

what one observes is not the hypothesis by itself, nor the bare conditional, but

rather, that one may reason from such and such background information to the

said conditional. So observing is not itself inferential; no control is exercized in

the ‘having’ of an insight that one might reason in a given manner — e.g., that

given the background information, if Mars moves in an elliptical path then it

would have such and such longitudes — for this is the novel uncontrolled insight

398 C. Tiercelin

into the ‘world of ideas,’ into Thirdness as given in perception (CP 5.150, 5.160,

5.173, 5.209–12, 7.198). Instead control enters when one decides to ‘adopt’ the

inference, thereby judging the conclusion to be true insofar as it is a consequence

of information one began with. The creative insight, recorded in the conditional

premise, occurs when one initially observes that one can reason in a certain

way. So while the novel hypothesis is generated within an episode of reasoning, it

does not itself occur as the result of a controlled inferential step. (Kapitan 1990:

506)

But one must also remember that ‘the perceptive judgement is the

result of a process, although of a process not su‰ciently conscious to be

controlled, or to state it more truly, not controllable and therefore not

fully conscious’ (EP 2: 211) and that the observation phase itself should

rather be viewed as implying some subconscious, continuous, not fully

controllable inferential processes: this is why it neither amounts to some

‘immediate consciousnesss of generality, direct experience of generality’(EP 2: 207) nor to ‘an infinite series of acts of criticism each of which

must require a distinct e¤ort’ such as are represented in the sophism of

Achilles and the tortoise (EP 2: 227). If Peirce notes that ‘Generality,

Thirdness, pours upon us in our very perceptual judgements, and all rea-

soning, so far as it depends on necessary reasoning, that is to say, mathe-

matical reasoning, turns upon the perception of generality and continuity

at every step’ (EP 2: 207), it is because the abductive suggestion is more

correctly described 1) on the one hand as ‘coming to us like a flash,’ as‘an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight (EP 2: 227): ‘It

is true that the di¤erent elements of the hypothesis were in our minds

before; but it is the idea of putting together what we had never dreamed

of putting together which flashes the new suggestion before our contem-

plation.’ (EP 2: 227); and 2) on the other hand, as the construction of an

icon or a diagram of the hypothetical (or may-be) state of things (CP

5.148), ‘the observation of which leads us to suspect that something is

true, which we may or may not be able to formulate with precision, andwe proceed to inquire whether this is true or not’ (EP 2: 212). As Turrisi

has noted, just like in mathematics where the reasoner is supposed to ‘see’

the fact that the argumentation of the single diagram is not merely single

but of a general nature, perception functions as ‘an abstractive observa-

tion’ of the generality of a necessity in the relation of certain features of

a diagrammatical icon (CP 2.227, 7.467; EP 2: 206). In the case of abduc-

tion, there is, ‘an abstractive perception of what seems to be a really oper-

ative generality (a general law of nature; a necessity) in the relation ofcertain features of the perceptual facts, and a perception of the generality

of the possibility, or, more exactly, the plausibility of the supposition that


this real generality is the explanation of the relation of these features’

(Turrisi 1990: 484).

Such a suggestive power of the Icons which ‘merely suggest the possi-

bility of what they represent, being percepts minus the insistency and per-

cussivity of percepts,’ since ‘in themselves, they are mere Semes, predicat-

ing of nothing, not so much as interrogatively’ may sound mysterious. It

is indeed ‘a very extraordinary feature of Diagrams that they show — asliterally as a Percept shows the Perceptual Judgment to be true, — that a

consequence does follow, and more marvellously yet, that it would follow

under all varieties of circumstances accompanying the premisses’ (NEM

317–8). To talk of a ‘perceiving’ may sound a bit odd, Peirce admits:

‘But what better can we do in logic?’ (EP 2: 213).

6. Conclusions: Some problems and clues for perception and abduction

Peirce’s views on perception and on abduction have often puzzled or even

been rejected as confused. Was he a direct or an indirect realist? What

role did the percipuum exactly play, midway between the percept and the

perceptual judgement? What about his account of illusions and hallucina-

tions, his anti-Cartesianism and yet insistency on the foundational role of

perceptual judgments? As far as abduction is concerned, the situationseems no better, in spite of the fact that Peirce has been receiving close

attention and elaboration in many areas, most notably in the philosophy

of science, by people working on the process of hypothesis formation or

trying to unravel the conceptual problems that abduction as a reasoning

faces (Psillos 2002: 605) or to fix the right model for an inference to the

best explanation and to use abduction as a good argument for the case of

scientific realism; but also in cognitive science and artificial intelligence,

on the part of researchers working on control, diagnosis analysis, ordi-nary reasoning and belief revision systems (Walliser et al. 2002) and look-

ing into the computational modelling of abduction. The main di‰culties

are well-known: how could Peirce view abduction both as an instinct, a

guessing power capable of insight and creative discoveries (but, as such,

partly uncontrollable) and as a genuine inference, submitted to con-

straints and norms, capable of both invention and selection but also au-

tonomous, and irreducible to induction and deduction? Was he always

careful enough in distinguishing the discovery and the justification partsof abduction, its psychological and logical aspects? And finally, was he

able to solve what still appears today as one of the basic problems abduc-

tion has to face: to be ampliative (content increasing) enough and at

400 C. Tiercelin

the same time to confer epistemic warrant on its outcomes (Psillos 2002:

606–7)?

In the preceding sections, I have tried to show that part of the di‰cul-

ties attributed to Peirce’s analyses might come from the lack of attention

they have received as regards the tight links he intended to draw between

both phenomena and the specific (semiotical and metaphysical) frame-

work within which he conducted his reflexions. As a conclusion I wouldlike to suggest that it is precisely in so doing that Peirce may have con-

tributed to draw some light on both issues as well.

6.1. As far as perception is concerned

Two di‰cult issues here concern the questions still raised today about the

(conceptual or non-conceptual) nature of perceptual content, and the sol-utions o¤ered to explain how causal processes (such as percepts) can jus-

tify perceptual judgments. Peirce’s approach suggests that perhaps these

are not the right alternatives and that a more finely grained semiotic,

triadic, categorial, realistic approach should be adopted in order to clarify

what goes on at the phenomenological level (in terms of an analysis of the

constituents of perception), but also at the logical and epistemological

levels. It is the core of his criticism of William James’ Principles of Psy-

chology. To some extent, Peirce embraces his ‘radical empiricism’ (CP

7.617) and even, as noted by Hookway (2002: 11–13) a position which

has a‰nities with Putnam’s ‘natural realism’ (1994, 1995, 1999): a theory

of immediate perception, of external things ‘out there’ which we can ‘per-

ceive immediately’ (Putnam 1990: 242), i.e., without any internal inter-

mediary (either idea, mental image, impression or sense datum viewed

merely as ‘inside the head’ or ‘inside the mind’, i.e.: the so-called ‘inter-

face illusion’) (Putnam 1999: 45; PP 453, ERE 54 ¤., 211–212); or maybe

just ‘a primitive impulse’ to ‘a‰rm immediately the reality of that whichis conceived’ (PP 660); Peirce also shows an awareness of the fragility of

the frontiers between the internal and the external (ERE 216–7), which

should be treated more as Jamesian ‘fringes’ (ERE 221), ‘shadings’ and

‘gradations’ than as absolute distinctions. Just as is the case with such

dichotomies as fact and value, observations and generalized inductions,

or even (but much more controversially, in my view) between those and

‘abductions,’ i.e., explanatory hypotheses which, up to a point, serve, in

Wittgensteinian terms, almost as ‘hinge-propositions’ (Putnam 1995: 57–58). Moreover, if natural realism implies context-sensitivity (Putnam

1999: 88–9), which is another (Jamesian) way of insisting that there is

no such thing as a description that reflects no particular interests at all


(Putnam 1999: 5), one might find a Peircian translation of this in the con-

stant refusal to consider that what is relative to thought cannot be real

(CP 5.430, 1.206–8). His defense of scholastic realism starts precisely

with an attack (close to Putnam’s) of all forms of metaphysical (or

Platonic) realism (Tiercelin 2002: 47) and with the claim that any correct

definition of the real must elaborate on the (Scotistic) idea that ‘the real is

what signifies something real’ (Tiercelin 1992). Peirce would also agreewith James and Putnam when they insist on the impossible separation be-

tween verbal words and their meaning (PP 504–5, 515; Putnam 1995: 66)

and claim that ‘what I hear is not correctly described as the sounds I

heard before plus an interpretation’ (Putnam 1995: 67); in other words,

‘experience is not factorizable.’ In Peircian terms, it means, for example,

as we have seen, that ‘by the time we can examine our ideas at all, we find

the process of combining them into sets has begun’ (CP 7.426, cf. 7.447,

7.631). If we see or imagine a deer on a meadow, we should not think ofit as a ‘mental image’ or as ‘a picture into which an interpretation has to

be read, any more than we should think of the ‘‘visual experience’’ of the

duck-rabbit drawing as if it were a second duck-rabbit drawing, one that

happens to be ‘‘mental’’ instead of ‘‘physical’’ ’ (Putnam 1999: 46).

Rather, what happens is similar to what is the case when ‘we hear a lan-

guage we understand,’ i.e., ‘we do no associate a sense with a sign-design;

we perceive the sense in the sense design’ (ibid.): hence, it has probably

more to do with what Wittgenstein called ‘the dawning of an aspect’(1982: §§429, 446, 447, 517–520).1

However it is doubtful — as Putnam himself noted, remarking that

Peirce’s model was closer to Reid’s version of direct realism than to his

own (1999: 186 note 11) — that such parallels could be drawn very far.

When Peirce writes to James on these issues, in particular on immediate

perception, he observes that it is no new view, but Reid’s and Kant’s

(CP 8.261; EP 2: 195). On the other hand, he criticizes James for being

too ‘psychologically’ oriented, too contemptuous towards metaphysics(CP 8.60), insu‰ciently phenomenological (CP 8.295) and logical (CP

8.65) and because of that, unable, for example, to see what is at issue

in the Helmholtzian treatment of perception as unconscious inference

(CP 8.62), which may be viewed as a ‘reasoning’ in a generalized sense

of that term (CP 8.62–8.63, 8.68) or as a virtual judgment, at any rate,

as something too strongly resembling inference (CP 8.70) to be ranked

as an ‘ordinary suggestion’ or association (CP 8.66). It is doubtful again

that Peirce would reject all logical divisions in favor of a vocabulary oftotal ‘fusion’ or ‘interpenetration’ (as his constant use of ‘irreducibility’

of three categories or modes of reasoning testifies). He criticizes James

for claiming that ‘through feelings, we become acquainted with things’,

402 C. Tiercelin

which he judges ‘at the root of a good deal of bad metaphysics’ (CP 8.79)

(and also at the root of James’s sensationalism [PP 647–648], which, as

we have seen, Peirce takes to be the wrong reading, as far as the direction

to take in the continuous seeing-thinking process is concerned) and com-

ments thus: ‘Is this classification of ‘‘mental states’’ as feelings and

thoughts su‰ciently scientific? Is it not better to adopt the logical division

not of ‘‘mental states’’ but of mental elements, into feelings-qualities, re-actions (volitions and experiences), and habit-taking?’ (CP 8.80). For sim-

ilar reasons, it is very unlikely that Peirce would have accepted to treat

Qualia in a merely intentional or adjectival way, or defended such a

view as the autonomy of experiential content — cf. James or Putnam’s

refusal of the Highest Common Factor (Putnam 1990: 243, 1999: 154)

— or subscribed to an Austinian-like disjunctive theory of perception

(Putnam 1999: 152–3). Again, the stress laid by him on the reality of the

dynamical object renders very dubious that Peirce would limit successfulexperience to a ‘sensing of aspects of the reality out there’ (PP 639) and

reject the causal theory of perception, according to which ‘to say that we

perceive external things means that we are caused to have certain subjec-

tive experiences in the appropriate way by those external things’ (Putnam

1999: 10), or what is implied by it. It is more likely to suppose that con-

trary to McDowell, for example, who claims that ‘there is no reason to

accept the dictum that a percept can only cause (and not justify) a verbal-

ized thought’ (Putnam 1995: 67), Peirce would suggest not to reject thedictum too quickly, but to examine the reasons pro and con, with all the

tools at our disposal in terms of logic (semiotic categories), epistemology

(method of inquiry, theory of knowlegde, of belief and truth, fallibilism,

etc.), scientific research (experimental psychology, physics, neurosciences,

linguistics, etc.), and metaphysics (in particular in order to come to a bet-

ter understanding of the — maybe rightly — supposedly continuous links

between mind and nature).

Most often in fact, Peirce appears suspicious about the term ‘direct,’either when he says that, strictly speaking, we have no ‘direct’ experi-

ence of generality or Thirdness or when he insists that ‘we are never abso-

lutely sure that a judgement is perceptual and not abductive,’ and notes

that such illusions of directness frequently happen because one omits cer-

tain factors (such as depth) (EP 2: 230): in the end, we can never be abso-

lutely sure that a judgement is perceptual and not abductive’ (EP 2: 230–

1).

In all of these respects and others, Peirce’s ‘direct realism’ is muchcloser to Reid’s approach, as I have shown elsewhere (Tiercelin 1989;

2002: 36–51). Both insist on the immediacy of perception, but, more

originally, manage to combine a form of ‘direct’ realism with a semiotic


treatment of perception (Rollin 1978; DeRose 1989; Todd Buras 2002:

457). Indeed (in a much more systematic way than was the case with

Berkeley, but in ways close to Condillac) (Tiercelin 2002), Reid analyzes

sensations as ‘natural signs’ of perceived qualities with which they have

no resemblance but to which they are causally related (Reid 121b, 122a–

b, 140a–141a). Perception (clearly distinguished from sensation) is a com-

bination of conception (or simple apprehension, not yet judgement) andbelief (which is the immediate e¤ect of my constitution [Reid 122b] and

not the e¤ect of reasoning [Reid 132b, 183b]). Part of the explanation of

our belief in the external world comes from the fact that we immediately

read, from the sign, the thing signified (Reid 188a, 194b, 196a, 199a),

while at the same time the unexpected and inexplicable character of our

sensations makes it necessary to believe in the existence of our sensations

(Reid 183a, 209a, 231b, 258a–260b, 445b). It is ‘the stamp of approval,’

or what Reid calls the ‘assent’ which explains why we can, when hearinga coach passing by, judge that it is there (Reid 110b), while there is no

resemblance at all between the two phenomena, which enables us to dis-

tinguish our perceptual beliefs from pure fancy, and make sure that our

beliefs are not a mere agreement or disagreement between ideas (Locke)

or a simple change in vividness in them (Hume).

Like Reid (who takes them as solid arguments against the sceptics of

the way of ideas tradition), Peirce considers that such characteristics

of perception are precisely what explains why it is impossible to criti-cize or control them, but also what entitles them to function as first

Common Sensical indubitable, acritical principles (CP 5.511; Tiercelin

1989: 216).

However, Peirce departs from Reid at a certain point: he objects to his

dualism, criticizes him (as James, for that matter, criticized the Reidian

Helmholtz in PP 633) for concentrating too much on such modes of rea-

soning as induction and analogy, for being not precise enough, although

being one of the few who realized the importance of all three categories(CP 5.55, note 1), on their specific role in our approach to reality, and,

he regrets that he did not have the means to see — but he wrote before

Darwin — that we follow less our instincts than ‘outgrow the applicabil-

ity of instinct’ (CP 5.511). Hence there can be no list of fixed indubitable

beliefs and we must quit the Scottish school of Common Sense to become

Critical Common Sensists (CP 5.444; 5.539), in other words, that unique

pragmatist combination of ‘fallibilism and anti-scepticism’ (Putnam 1995:

20).More than the possibility of illusion of directness, it is such a critical

and fallibilist attitude which explains why, although Peirce insists on the

links between perception and abduction,

404 C. Tiercelin

1. he maintains an irreducible di¤erence between the two: contrary to an

abductive suggestion, which is ‘something whose truth can be ques-

tioned or even denied,’ ‘we cannot form the least conception of what

it would be to deny the perceptual judgement’ (EP 2: 230) which is

absolutely beyond control and criticism (EP 2: 227); but

2. at the same time, Peirce insists on showing how, in perceptual experi-

ences — such as the serpentine line, or the Schroeder’s staircase, orthe train at rest which seems to be moving when another one is slowly

passing by (CP 7.643) — while ‘the first time it is shown to us, it

seems as completely beyond the control of rational criticism as any

percept is,’ yet, ‘after many repetitions of the now familiar experi-

ment, the illusion wears o¤, becoming first less decided, and ulti-

mately ceasing completely’ (EP 2: 228), as if we had ‘thus converted

an uncontrollable percipuum into a controllable imagination by a

brief process of education’ (CP 7.647).

6.2. As far as abduction is concerned

Contrary to what has sometimes been attempted, i.e., to separate what

is presented as a confusion in Peirce’s treatment of abduction, by limiting

the logic of generating a hypothesis (creating, discovering) to abduc-

tion, while leaving to deduction and induction the logic of preference (se-lecting, evaluating, and justifying the new hypothesis in comparison with

rival candidates), it seems that Peirce had no intention to adopt such a

view. The presence of such tight connections between perception and ab-

duction may be part of the explanation. But does such an approach imply

that — in contradiction with other claims (e.g., CP 2.107) — Peirce con-

fused logic and psychology or was guilty of overrating such irrational

elements as instinct and guessing? (Hintikka 1998: 505–6)

Concerning the first point, it is true that Peirce himself often adopts adeflationist position about the logical value and scope of abduction. Of its

validity ‘there is little to be said’ (EP 2: 216); it is a ‘process of thought

capable of producing no conclusion more definite than a conjecture’

(NEM 319; EP 2: 232), a very fallible Insight, the ‘lowest’ of the three

classes of reasoning’ (NEM 37); although valid, it is often weak, more

often wrong than right (EP 2: 218), to be evaluated more in terms of

uberty than validity. It ‘merely suggests that something may be,’ so that

‘its only justification is that from its suggestion, deduction can draw aprediction which can be tested by induction’ (EP 2: 216). One must in-

deed always remember that ‘any hypothesis, therefore, may be admis-

sible, in the absence of any special reason to the contrary, provided it be


capable of experimental verification, and only in so far as it is capable of

such verification. This is approximately the doctrine of pragmatism’ (EP

2: 235, emphasis added). In the end, it is true that ‘no new truth is other-

wise reached,’ and that ‘some new truths are thus reached,’ but ‘it is no

more nor less than guessing, a faculty attributed to Yankees’ (NEM 320,

emphasis added), even if one should never forget that because it ‘resem-

bles instinct,’ ‘the relative frequency with which it is right is on the wholethe most wonderful thing in our constitution’ (EP 2: 217–218).

However, abduction is clearly intended as logical (EP 2: 231). But, how

should this be taken? As Pape has shown, Peirce has such a ‘compre-

hensive view of logic,’ that abduction itself has a ‘logically unique status,’

exhibiting ‘intriguing mathematical and formal properties that are not

adequately captured if they are described as practical strategies for gener-

ating directives’ (Pape 1999: 250), as are illustrated by such interpreta-

tions, e.g., as Hintikka’s (1998) or Kapitan’s (1997). Indeed, many aspectsof abduction may turn out to pertain to pure deduction, and thus threaten

the ‘Autonomy thesis.’ But one should also remember that within Peirce’s

new semiotic (and semantic) framework of formal logic, deduction itself

acquires a ‘logically unique status’ (Tiercelin 1991), in particular by

such innovations as the corollarial-theorematic distinction and the semi-

formal, semi-empirical use Peirce makes of these ‘skeleton’ (or schema-

tized) icons which bear much resemblance with P. Johnson-Laird’s men-

tal models (Tiercelin 1993b: 250, 1995: 65) and show that Peirce wasaware not only of the possibility of an iconic logic, but of the necessity

nowadays most often admitted to combine a connectionist and a cogniti-

vist approach in any account of the mental. Nor should one underesti-

mate the way Peirce tries to account for the rather unique status of logical

norms, conceived more — in accordance with the views developed in his

synechistic and realist metaphysics — in continuity with nature than in

direct opposition with it, along lines not unlike the third option Kant

had envisaged in his account of the deduction of the categories, i.e., a sys-tem of preformation of pure reason (Tiercelin 1997).

This is why, concerning the second point, one should also be careful

not to overrate the weight of the objections. As I myself pointed out,

some mysterious aspects remain about the kind of ‘perceiving’ of generals

which takes place in the observational, or abductive phase of suggestion,

even if the mystery is somewhat attenuated by the special signification

and functioning Peirce confers to generality itself and by the necessary

links icons must maintain with symbols (or the intentional Interpretant)in order for any full-fledged meaningful experience to take place (NEM

318): seeing can never be reduced to a pure ‘thinking,’ but thinking can

never be reduced to a mere ‘seeing’ either. It remains that, because of the

406 C. Tiercelin

first requirement, the iconic perception of hypothesis in its generating

phase never operates in a vacuum: it always emerges from a background

rich in analogies and heuristic procedures or ‘collateral’ information. In

other words, hypotheses are never generated fortuitously (CP 7.48,

6.476). This is why also they most often appear in a context of breach of

expectation or surprise which troubles the mental state of ‘cognitive calm’

and stimulate a demand for explanation (Kapitan 1997: 482; Walliseret al. 2002: 3–4). But is this a defect or, on the contrary, the only way to

get a clear view of what goes on in the heuristic phase of the logic of ab-

duction? As noted by many writers, unless one analyzes abduction in such

a dynamic context of inquiry, not only is it impossible to avoid the objec-

tion of circularity and the objection of the fallacy of the a‰rmation of the

consequent — in which, Peirce’s earlier syllogistic treatments (CP 2.623)

fell (Hintikka 1998: 508; Niinuoloto 1984: 35, Walliser et al. 2002: 3), but

it becomes very di‰cult to explain the kind of ‘ampliative’ step abductionis supposed to realize (Hintikka 1998: 505), and more generally to ac-

count for non monotonic inferences (i.e., inferences which weaken the

usual operation of deduction in order to reflect rules of common reason-

ing in a context of proof ) which are yet so frequent as soon as one tries to

understand how belief revision systems work, such as is paradigmatically

exemplified by Peirce’s doubt-belief model of inquiry. Peirce’s reluctance

to separate the context of discovery and the context of selection may find

here its origin but also helps to clarify the intermediate position he finallyseems to adopt towards abduction.

Indeed abduction is at least an inference to an explanation, as is clear

as early as 1865 (W 1: 267), ‘the first starting of a hypothesis and the en-

tertaining of it, whether as a simple interrogation or with any degree of

confidence’ (CP 6.525), intended as a discovery of causes, while induction

is viewed as a discovery of laws (CP 2.173), whose task is that of ‘con-

structing potential answers to a question’ or a cognitive problem (Levi

1979, 1991: 71) and whose value may be seen as an ability to give a po-tentially correct answer to a question or to give a potential explanation of

the facts known so far, an important part of the before-trial evaluation of

a hypothesis (Niinuoloto 1984: 34–36; 1999: 444–445), hence something

which has a high degree of potential understanding and functions as a

question-answer step in an interrogative inquiry (Hintikka 1998: 521).

But is it only this?

It is unlikely, at the other extreme, that Peirce intends to view it as a

‘strong’ explanation,’ i.e., as an inference to the best explanation (IBE)(Harman 1965, Thagard 1988, Lipton 1991). Indeed, he often insists on

the a‰nities betweeen man and nature (CP 5.604, 6.10) and retorts, as

most scientific realists do (Smart 1989; Putnam 1978; Boyd 1984; Leplin


1984), to the ‘no miracle argument’, i.e., the abductive inference from the

empirical success of scientific theories to the explanatory hypothesis that

these theories are at least to some degree truthlike or approximately true

descriptions of reality (Tiercelin 1993a: 102–103). And his metaphysical

turn of mind, no doubt, makes him often appeal to ‘the background

knowledge privilege’ (Van Fraassen 1989: 142–143; Psillos 1996: 37), i.e.

the argument invoked by scientific realists in order to avoid the construc-tive empiricist’s argument from ‘the best of a bad lot’ (Van Fraassen

1989: 142–143): Peirce makes such an ampliative step — involving belief

that the truth is already more likely to be found within the lot of theories

available to them — which, as Van Fraassen notes, must assume a Princi-

ple of Privilege, i.e., that ‘nature predisposes us to hit on the right range

of hyptheses (1989: 142–3). But, as Boyd (1984), Lipton (1991), Psillos

(1996: 39–40) have argued, it is at least doubtful that theory-choice oper-

ates in a knowledge vacuum. It rather operates within and is guided by anetwork of background knowledge, which, incidentally can ‘drastically

narrow down the space for hypotheses that provide a potential explana-

tion of the evidence at hand’ (Psillos 1996: 39). So there is a sense in

which we are priviledged and warrantedly so. The problem is only the ex-

tent of the background knowledge priviledge (Psillos 1996: 37–39).

It is precisely the awareness of this problem, finding its expression in

Peirce’s radically fallibilist attitude, which makes it very unlikely that he

would have viewed abduction as a synonym for an IBE (Hintikka 1998:510), namely as an inference with the maximal degree of information

content or systematic power, or even, as a ‘likeliest’ explanation in such

deflated versions of IBE as Lipton’s Loveliest Potential Explanation (Lip-

ton 1991).

However, abduction is more than a route of finding worthwile hypoth-

eses participating in no way to the justification or support part of the

hypothesis and leaving its acceptability to the observable predications

deductively derived from it and its confirmation to inductively conductedtrials or tests A better guideline (to understand Peirce’s position and

maybe also abduction itself ) would rather be to view it as inference to a

good explanation, whose role is to ‘state which belief revision operations

are adequately involved when selecting hypothesis which are ‘‘seriously’’

considered without being necessarily accepted’ (Walliser et al. 2002: 9).

As in the case of perception when we first colligate, observe (in Reidian

terms — conceive) but do not yet fully believe, judge or assent. In other

words, abduced hypotheses themselves have to be tested before beingadopted. As a result, it may happen that one of them may be selected

after this testing as ‘the best explanation,’ but just the same, it may turn

out that all of them should be discarded and that one should proceed to a

408 C. Tiercelin

complete revision of the context in which abduction took place and reac-

tivate some hypotheses previously ignored (Walliser et al. 2002: 15). In-

deed this conceiving part or heuristic phase is so fallible that it must

obey very demanding logical rules, and, as one knows, such are Peirce’s

drastic requirements, in terms of simplicity, economy in time, money,

thinking and energy, syncretism, falsifiability power, etc. (Tiercelin

1993a: 102). However, this is probably the only way to respect not onlythe spirit of Peirce’s conception of abduction but to understand how and

why abduction is so important in the whole dynamics of reasoning en-

gaged in any rational process of inquiry.

Although Peirce viewed it as his first duty to explore the ‘purely logical

doctrine of how discovery must take place,’ he also admitted that there

might be ‘in addition to this, a psychological account of the matter of the

utmost importance and ever so extensive’ (CP 2.107), and that this should

‘cover every possibility.’ Hence, the ‘method of discovering methods’ thusinitiated ‘should be founded on a general doctrine of methods of attaining

purposes, in general, and this, in turn, should spring from a still more

general doctrine of the nature of teleological action, in general’ (CP

2.108).

In view of his scientific and laboratory turn of mind but also of his sci-

entific conception of metaphysics itself, it is likely that Peirce would have

more than welcome the various attempts or ‘hopeful suggestions’ (EP 2:

234) nowadays conducted in all these various areas. Incidentally, ‘everysingle item of scientific theory which stands established today has been

due to abduction’ (EP 2: 216). True, ‘Its only justification is that if we

are ever to understand things at all, it must be in that way’ (EP 2: 205).

But, then again, unless giving up the hope in ‘the only possibility of

knowledge’ (EP 2: 212) ‘what better can we do?’

Note

1. This would require much more elaboration and a detailed analysis of Wittgenstein’s

conception of aspects, of his criticism of Kohler’s Gestalt psychology, of the perception

of mere general forms and of the extent to which he favors (or not) such a view of per-

ception as ‘assimilation.’ On this, cf. in particular, J. Bouveresse (1995, 340–405). As a

matter of fact, Peirce’s analyses in terms of iconic perception of generals which follow,

so to speak, the natural organisation of our (evolutionary) constitution, may turn out to

be closer to Kohler’s views than to Wittgenstein’s, and probably also closer to a form of

ecological, ‘naıve physics’ or ‘naıve ontology’ approach such as Gibson’s, R. Thom’s, or

more recently Barry Smith’s, according to which one can already find, at the ‘morpho-

logical’ level, so to speak, intrinsically meaningful (though not yet fully semantic) struc-

tures, mid-way between the physical (morphologically interpreted in terms of the new

physics) and the symbolic or propositional levels.


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Claudine Tiercelin (b. 1952) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris and

member of the Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS) [email protected] or 3tiercelin@univ-

paris12.fr4. Her research interests include C. S. Peirce, classical and contemporary pragma-

tism, and metaphysics. Her major publications include La pensee-signe: etudes sur Peirce

(1993); Peirce et le pragmatisme (1993); Hilary Putnam, l’heritage pragmatiste (2002); and

‘La metaphysique et l’analyse conceptuelle’ (2002).

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2005. abduction and the semiotics of perception

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