November 8th to 11th, 2004

Gisele Molinari Fessore
giselefessore@bol.com.br
PUC/SP - Brazil

THE HYPOTHESIS AND CONSTRUCTION: ORIGINALITY IN PEIRCE

ABSTRACT
In Peirce´s time it was common to consider the existence of two ways of thinking: deduction (inference from the causes to the effects, or from the universal to the particular) and induction (which follows the opposite path). One of the most original pieces of contribution from Peirce was adding a third way of thinking to the two ways of inference we just mentioned. In better words, it's a first way, named abduction or retroduction. Abduction is a thinking process from where we generate new ideas concerning the elaboration of hypothesis, in the scientific thinking as well as in the standard thinking. So, if new ideas come from abduction, we can truly say that it is the first way of inference, being the first step in the entire investigation. How does Peirce define and make abduction a different kind of thinking, when compared to the first two ones, and what is the importance of hypothesis to the expansion of knowledge? We'll see the possible answers for these questions.

KEYWORDS: Deduction, Abduction, Induction, Hypothesis, Inference.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil