Peirce on perception and abduction

Abstract

Abduction is commonly understood as a reasoning of the form: q; if p, then q therefore p. In the paper I argue that this is not only a simplification but also a distortion of Peirce's conception of abduction, since it ignores that abduction is, as Peirce explicitly claims, an induction over properties. Further, the epistemological significance of Peirce's concept of abduction is neglected as well, since abductive reasoning is almost exclusively related to the way in which one forms a scientific hypothesis, while it is overlooked that even the most elementary forms of knowledge involve abduction. Namely Peirce claims that the perceptual judgment is the limiting case of the abductive judgment, and this thesis cannot be understood properly if abduction is understood as having the above mentioned form.