Projectual abduction is the inference drawing the means to achieve an end. Planning a course of action is an inferential task and we claim that the relevant inference is abduction. We distinguish projectual abduction from epistemic abduction. While epistemic abduction aims to determine an explanatory relation, projectual abduction aims to determine a teleological relation. It is important to remind in any case that abduction does not stand by itself: as is true for epistemic abduction, projectual abduction has to be developed (...) and evaluated by subsequent deduction and induction. After defining projectual abduction in section 1, we focus on the relations between projectual abduction, normativity and truth in section 2. Then we sketch how projectual abduction works in artistic creativity , in evolutionary and teleological processes and finally in social processes. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to describe central elements of, and the relationships among, three interrelated domains of inquiry. The first domain is Charles Peirce's semiotic theory which offers five concepts of special relevance to the other two domains: primary components of the triadic sign, including the object, representamen, and interpretant; the unceasing process of semiosis, or continuous growth of the developing sign; the three forms of inference, of which Peirce's notion of abduction is of special interest; the (...) element of surprise in experience, and the universal categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness that ground Peirce's overarching theory. The second domain incorporates the discipline of psychosemiotics, which is defined as the study of how we learn, understand, and use the signs of culture. The article outlines the nature and scope of psychosemiotics and emphasizes its grounding in Peircean semiotics, meaning‐making, and the five concepts listed above. The claim will be made that signs, semiosis, and meaning act through the seven signways outlined in the article and thereby bind the individual into the surrounding physical and cultural environments. The third domain is formal education, for which implications are presented as derived from Peircean theory and viewed through the psychosemiotic lens. In this perspective, all forms of education are semiotic processes grounded in signs and meaning‐making. Further, formal education consists of learning a wide variety of culturally‐valued signs by way of the seven signways and through processes that often differ from a technocratic, standards‐driven, accountability‐oriented approach to learning and instruction. (shrink)

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up with each other in (...) long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

Our brains make up a series of signs and are engaged in making or manifesting or reacting to a series of signs: through this semiotic activity they are at the same time engaged in “being minds” and so in thinking intelligently. An important effect of this semiotic activity of brains is a continuous process of “externalization of the mind” that exhibits a new cognitive perspective on the mechanisms underling the semiotic emergence of abductive processes of meaning formation. To illustrate this (...) process I will take advantage of the analysis of some aspects of the cognitive interplay between internal and external representations. I consider this interplay critical in analyzing the relation between meaningful semiotic internal resources and devices and their dynamical interactions with the externalized semiotic materiality suitably stocked in the environment. Hence, minds are material, “extended” and artificial in themselves. A considerable part of human abductive thinking is occurring through an activity consisting in a kind of reification in the external environment and a subsequent re-projection and reinterpretation through new configurations of neural networks and chemical processes. I also illustrate how this activity takes advantage of hybrid representations and how it can nicely account for various processes of creative and selective abduction, bringing up the question of how multimodal aspects involving a full range of sensory modalities are important in hypothetical reasoning. (shrink)

My argument in this article is this: we need a shift of methodological focus, from the analyses of the results of creative processes, the subjects of creative processes, and justifying our theories by the use of examples to the analyses of the creative process using case-studies. The importance of the kind of method employed in abductive research has been underrated. Methods influence the validity of conclusions. I will mainly examine two different kinds of methodological focuses that in effect diverts attention (...) away from abduction. I term these two focuses subject- and object focus. Furthermore I will draw attention to a kind of method that in a greater degree supports the principles of abduction and as such functions as a fruitful epistemic vehicle for examining the creative processes. (shrink)

چکیده در پژوهش حاضر با تحلیل محتوایی که از آثار موجود در رابطه با فلسفه چارلز ساندرس پیرس انجام شد، روش‌شناسی این فیلسوف آمریکایی و بررسی سهم آن بر رویکردها و روش‌های پژوهش مورد توجه قرار گرفت. این بررسی ضمن اینکه بیانگر ارتباط بیانات پیرس در حوزه روش، با فن خطابه نظری در منطق، مقولات سه‌گانه و انواع استدلال است، نشان می‌دهد که پیرس در فلسفه خود از سه روش پراگماتیک، دستیابی به مقولات فلسفی و روش‌های تثبیت عقیده سخن می‌گوید. (...) همچنین یافته‌ها علاوه بر بیان مبانی روش‌های مذکور، حاکی از تأثیر روش پراگماتیک بر پوزیتیویسم منطقی و سهم روش دستیابی به مقولات در حوزه پدیدارشناسی است. در رابطه با تثبیت عقیده، پیرس چهار روش دلبستگی جزم‌آلود، سلطه‌گرا، پیشینی و علمی را مطرح می‌سازد و از آن میان تنها از روش علمی جانبداری می‌کند. این روش که متشکل از سه روش حدسی، قیاسی و استقرائی است، به دلیل نقش پژوهش در دستیابی به حقیقت، به همراه روش پراگماتیک در بسط رویکرد پوزیتیویسم منطقی سهیم بوده است. این روش ضمن دربرداشتن مشخصات تحقیق کیفی، به دلیل رویکرد تجربی‌اش به پژوهش به همراه روش‌های پراگماتیک و دستیابی به مقولات، پراگماتیسم پیرس را به عنوان بنیادی برای روش تحقیق ترکیبی معرفی می‌کند. (shrink)