William Davis

The Information Systems Consultant's Handbook: Systems Analysis and Design

From the Publisher: The Information System Consultants Handbook familiarizes systems analysts, systems designers, and information systems consultants with underlying principles, specific documentation, and methodologies. Eighty-two chapters comprise the book, and each chapter covers a single tool, technique, set of principles, or methodology. The clear, concise narrative, supplemented with numerous illustrations and diagrams, makes the material accessible for readers - effectively outlining new and unfamiliar analysis and design topics.

Hypothesis or Abduction: The Originative Phase of Reasoning

We have already seen that Peirce, in his early “Faculties” essays, refers to cognitive processes of all types as “inferences.” (Cf. 5.237) The point of these essays is to deny that there is any such thing as an immediate intuition of any kind, and the word “inference,” or, better yet, “synthesis,” represents well his alternative view that all cognitive processes are movements of the mind from one thing to another. He compares thought to music in that its essence involves movement and that it has a natural end, i.e., belief and habit (both habits of action and habits of thought). For Peirce, there are three kinds of reasoning processes: deduction, induction, and abduction. Some of his greatest insights are found in his understanding of these modes of thought, and much of his philosophy is implicit in his explication of them. There are, however, certain very important clarifications and perhaps even improvements which can be made over the way Peirce sees the matter.

Fallibilism: The Self-Corrective Feature of Thought

We have already achieved a preliminary understanding of Peirce’s treatment of “meaning,” but since this topic has been a major preoccupation of twentieth century philosophy we will go into the matter in more detail. In what follows we offer a very brief outline of major schools of thought on the subject. What they all have in common is a tendency to equate “meaning” with “usage” in different senses of this latter term. It is interesting to see this problem from a Peircean viewpoint, and the suggested answer to the problem which we present below is obviously based upon Peirce’s analysis of such related concepts as “rule,” “idea,” “conceivable practical consequences,” etc. But rather than anticipating our conclusion here, let us rather lead up to it.

The Cartesian Circle: A Final Look at Scepticism

The so-called Cartesian Circle problem is scepticism in its most difficult form. We hope in this final section to examine this problem in the light of Peirce’s epistemological principles. This ought to be helpful both from the standpoint of perhaps “answering” the problem, as well as from the standpoint of clarifying Peirce’s doctrines by application of them, to yet another philosophical difficulty.

Concrete Reasonableness: Cooperation Between Reason and Instinct

Peirce was not a “one-idea’d” philosopher. He is most famous for his development of the idea of pragmatism, but this was one idea among many for Peirce. As Peirce continues to become more widely known, the recognition grows that he had original and incisive things to say on almost all of the most interesting philosophical questions. In this chapter we will see Pcircc at his best, making many creative suggestions which bear upon most difficult questions. First we will discuss the basic role which our primitive instincts play in the reasoning process, particularly as our instinct guides the abductive process. Then we will try to show where instinct should be trusted and where it should not be trusted, by way of balancing the emphasis which Peirce places on instinct.

Inference: The Essence of All Thought

Charles Sanders Peirce may be classed unambiguously among the “process philosophers,” of whom there have been many in American thought — particularly James, Dewey, and Whitehead. A process philosophy has its peculiar advantages and problems, but Peirce applied the idea of process to the phenomenon of cognition in a truly radical and original way. For Peirce, the thinking of a thought, or the reading or hearing of a sentence, or even the perception of a sense datum, is analogous to hearing a musical phrase with the sense of flowing from note to note and the relief of the resolution at the end. In this first section we will examine this view — a view which characterizes thought as inference in contrast to intuition in the Cartesian sense.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason

The basic philosophical difficulty people feel in believing in freewill lies in the fact that this doctrine seems to violate the principle of sufficient reason. Now the principle of sufficient reason is simply the doctrine that behind every event whatever there is a “sufficient,” i.e., entirely adequate, reason for its happening rather than something else happening. This of course is nothing but the principle of causality or determinism expressed in different words. In any event, Leibniz, who enunciated the principle of sufficient reason (and who was a determinist) was quite right in emphasizing this principle and in placing it alongside the principle of contradiction as a fundamental postulate of reason. I do not say that the principle was or is correct; only that he was right in emphasizing it, for, correct or not, it is an idea of high importance.

The Relation Between the Will, the Reason, and the Good

William James writes, “… our first act of freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we are free. This should exclude, it seems to me, from the free will side of the question all hope of a coercive demonstration…”1

The Problem Introduced

Very few persons interested in freewill as a philosophical problem will have any great need for an introduction to the points at issue. Indeed, the problem of freewill must surely be one of the most popular of all philosophical and religious issues. It must occur to most everyone to wonder whether his life and actions are altogether fated or not. “What will be, will be,” is a popular saying expressing one side of the issue. Soldiers will say of a fallen comrade, “His number came up” expressing again what is conceived to be the inevitability of certain events.

Self-Deception and Auto-Suggestion

The phenomenon of self-transcendence shows itself in various forms. It is involved when we think about thinking, when we love our loves and hate our hates, when we practice self-discipline, when we change ourselves or even think about ourselves. But at least as remarkable as any of these manifestations of self-transcendence is the act of self-deception, which we wish to consider now. In self-deception a man takes something that he knows to be true or very likely true, and systematically and habitually represses the thought of this truth from his conscious mind, until at last he genuinely believes that this truth is a falsehood. It is a veritable miracle that a man can know, with one part of his mind, that something is the case, and then cultivate the thought that it is not the case, to the very point where he convinces himself.