Information = Comprehension × Extension • Comment 7
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https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/10/28/information-comprehension-x-exten…
Let's stay with Peirce's example of inductive inference a little longer
and try to clear up the more troublesome confusions tending to arise.
Figure 2 shows the implication ordering of logical terms
in the form of a lattice diagram.
Figure 2. Disjunctive Term u, Taken as Subject
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https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/ice-figure-2.jpg
Figure 4 shows an inductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue
of an indicial sign.
Figure 4. Disjunctive Subject u, Induction of Rule v ⇒ w
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https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/ice-figure-4.jpg
One final point needs to be stressed. It is important to recognize the
disjunctive term itself — the syntactic formula “neat, swine, sheep, deer”
or any logically equivalent formula — is not an index but a symbol. It has
the character of an artificial symbol which is constructed to fill a place in
a formal system of symbols, for example, a propositional calculus. In that
setting it would normally be interpreted as a logical disjunction of four
elementary propositions, denoting anything in the universe of discourse
which has any of the four corresponding properties.
The artificial symbol “neat, swine, sheep, deer” denotes objects which serve
as indices of the genus herbivore by virtue of their belonging to one of the
four named species of herbivore. But there is in addition a natural symbol
which serves to unify the manifold of given species, namely, the concept of
a cloven‑hoofed animal.
As a symbol or general representation, the concept of a cloven‑hoofed animal
must connote an attribute and connote so as to determine what it denotes.
Thus we observe a natural expansion in the connotation of the symbol,
amounting to what Peirce calls the “superfluous comprehension” or
information added by an “ampliative” or synthetic inference.
In sum we have sufficient information to motivate an inductive inference,
from the Fact u ⇒ w and the Case u ⇒ v to the Rule v ⇒ w.
Reference —
Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”,
Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce :
A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
Regards,
Jon
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