Giovanni Tuzet (Bocconi University)

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November 21 FRI — 14.30-16.30

Aula Seminari — Cortile Ghiacciaia, II floor (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)

IS QUALITATIVE INDUCTION A KIND OF INDUCTION?

Abstract. In one of his papers Peirce distinguishes three kinds of induction: Crude Induction, Quantitative Induction, and Qualitative Induction. The third is not based on the experience of a mass (as the first), nor on the experience of a definite collection of instances (as the second), but on a “stream of experience” of different parts whose evidential value must be critically scrutinized. To illustrate the dynamics of Qualitative Induction, Peirce uses the example of an investigator who starts from a hypothesis and tries to construct a thesis out of it, considering the evidential weight of the hypothesis, elaborating some conditional predictions from it and testing them. The presentation will discuss the idea of Qualitative Induction compared with other classifications of our inductive processes, and will ask whether it is a genuine kind of induction, or a (disguised) form of abduction, or something else.