Cultivating the Guessing Instinct

1 Introduction

Habit transcends conformity to mechanistic syndromes, which surface without fail. “Were the tendency to take habits replaced by an absolute requirement that the [battery] cell should discharge itself always in the same way, or according to any rigidly fixed condition whatever, all possibility of habit developing into intelligence would be cut off at the outset…” (Peirce 1.390: c1890). Peirce’s insistence that habit must transcend blind adherence to regularity in no way conflicts with his determination that habit needs to incorporate the element of change, because absent some opportunity for divergence, automatic iterations can never hope to illustrate any logical relation between concurrent events, necessary to abductive reasoning. The prime purpose of Peirce’s concept of habit, then, is to serve as a foundation for the logic of event relations, which are indexical in nature. But it is likewise critical to point out that although Peirce’s notion of habit incorporates forces of change, the onset/impetus for the change is not at all material to the existence of habit as an implicit argument. In this way, habit consists in an implicit logical connection between two or more events (causal or otherwise); and the nucleus of one event’s effect upon the other(s) defines the habit as well as the logical relationship holding between the two. It is evident, then, that without the component of change, habit would lack its defining characteristic – that of suggesting the nature of event relations, connected early in ontogeny via indexical actions.

2 Habit-inference interconnection

In its role as governor of event relations, habit likewise can surface from instincts. In 1902, Peirce refers to a habit as an instinct:

If I may be allowed to use the word ‘habit’, without any implication as to the time or manner in which it took birth, so as to be equivalent to the corrected phrase ‘habit or disposition’, that is, as some general principle working in a man’s nature to determine how he will act, then an instinct, in the proper sense of the word, is an inherited habit, or in more accurate language, an inherited disposition. But since it is difficult to make sure whether a habit is inherited or is due to infantile training and tradition, I shall ask leave to employ the word ‘instinct’ to cover both cases. (2.170)

Peirce selected “instinct” over “habit” to make emphatic the spontaneity intrinsic in habit, given the lack of deliberation necessary to instate a new belief or action pattern. Instinct applies to tendencies of belief/conduct resultant from biological predisposition. Peirce’s use of “disposition” underscores both the implicit nature of knowledge acquisition and how habits are governed by a general system of congruent beliefs and actions. It is a tendency to guess right in spite of blunders along the way. Peirce’s deliberate use of “instinct” reveals his wish to deemphasize the knowledge source, while Peirce explicitly emphasizes its foundation as an unplanned assertion cradled within a preconceived belief system. As such, habit carries with it both the character of spontaneously emerging guesses and their congruity with an already constructed system of beliefs and action.

In 1907, Peirce addresses the latter claim that the redundant nature of habit ultimately illustrates the compelling effect of a set of connected behaviors (EP 2: 413), as well as the behavior’s relevance within the person’s cognitive, affective and logical systems. Habit must be distinguished from “disposition,” in that it serves a reliably directive and imperative purpose in the scheme of one’s design; hence it commands action. It is equivocal to conducting oneself in the “same way” in “similar circumstances.” One’s actions are guided by the same percepts and “fancies,” giving rise to tendencies:

Habits differ from dispositions in having been acquired as consequences of the principle, virtually well-known even to those whose powers of reflection are insufficient to its formulation, that multiply reiterated behavior of the same kind, under similar combinations of percepts and fancies, produces a tendency – the habit – actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future. (EP 2: 413)

Conduct becomes habit when the particular action is compelled by dreams (“fancies”) or interpretations of events – demonstrating some settled upon paradigm in accommodation to the same contextual features.

In producing or not the compelled conduct, habit entails some semblance of self-control. In 1911 (MS 674), Peirce indicates how self-control is the gatekeeper for whether a conduct possesses sufficient value to continue:

…this is a different kind of exertion being describable to a person who has experienced it as an act of giving a compulsive command to oneself. Some books call it ‘selfhypnotization’, whatever that may signify. This [is] effective whether there be any ‘disposition’, i.e., any imperfectly developed or otherwise imperfect habit, or not. (MS 674:14)

Here self-control consists in “giving a command to one’s self” because it is in the command/imperative that one places limits and direction – whether the outgrowth becomes a general habit or merely approximates a habit. Self-control surfaces consequent to the self-overseeing the self’s own mental or actualized conduct, requiring some degree of conscious and deliberate internal intervention. Peirce indicates that behavior may be self-induced not from conscious effort, but from a form of self-hypnotization, such that forces intrinsic to the action itself engender the command – taking up the effort toward resolving the cause. As such, one’s own action propels action, persuading the subject of the value of the cause. The latter still qualifies as self-control in view of the strong influence of the performance itself to convince the actor of its value to the purposes at hand. By engaging in the conduct, the actor provides direction or commands to himself.

Carrying out these commands from exercised action schemes is a powerful instrument to develop the determinations which are inherent in Peirce’s concept of habit. Peirce identifies habit with determinations as opposed to resolutions. He defines resolutions as acts decided in a rather fleeting manner. Resolutions may, in fact, be orchestrated more than once; but they are absent genuine directives or purposes. In contrast, determinations ascend to the will to achieve a goal. To reliably achieve a particular goal/consequence, one must possess a hunch guiding the subject as to which behaviors culminate in which outcomes, whereby determinations are born. In this way, determinations are promoted by an increased degree of self-control, and often require the implementation of metaskills to act in a certain way under certain conditions. Here consciousness informs logic to bring about knowledge of how a consequence is reached – increasing the effectiveness of the action scheme. Similarly, consciousness informs action by directing it toward a goal, hence providing a purpose.

3 Conscious habits to facilitate inferential reasoning

Peirce illustrates how consciously implementing a hunch is tantamount to taking a habit. In fact, he coins the term “habituescence” to memorialize the interdependency of objective logic and idiosyncratic insights harvested in Firstness and enacted in Secondness. Habituescence synthesizes the well-founded inference-making generated in abductions with the “creative hallucinations” which Peirce refers to in EP 2:192 (1903). Habituescence requires both consciousness of what might ultimately be acceptable in the social community or that of scholars and a new seed of contemplation perceived to be plausible. In MS 930: 31 (1913), Peirce’s use of “habituescence” or the “taking of a habit” obviates the need for deliberate and conscious integration of objective and subjective factors present in determining whether a hunch reaches abductive status. Hence, taking a habit requires, at minimum, a conscious decision as to whether the insight from internal sources has objective validity. This decision as to the plausibility of the inference demonstrates how firm internal directives influence belief and action habits.^[1] In settling upon a novel viable inference, the inference-maker imposes a habit change upon himself. The selection of the hunch as viable creates new mental and action habits (cf. West 2015a), which propel conduct. As such, abductions serve as imperatives directing one’s own conduct and potentially that of the community at large.

Conduct here refers not merely to actions, but also to mental habits – habits of feeling and belief which can impel action, or of cognition in which relatively invariant concepts include or exclude single events. All of these processes call us to the doctrine that structure is paramount to inferential improvements via habit change. This rather plastic system is foundational to the ultimate reach for truth through inquiry, or as Peirce terms it, the “twigging of ideas” (MS 930: 32, c.1913).

The relevance of the “twigging of ideas” to abduction is unmistakable; it constitutes the impetus for opening up regularity to habit change brought about by advances in inferential reasoning. As such, abduction is inquiry-seeking; it supplies the system for guessing right in the face of an unexpected consequence. Abductions are not merely any inference, they rise to the level of inferences that suggest a novel way of resolving a problem – although they need not be correct in their initial form; ultimately they uncover the “truth at last” (EP 2: 250; 1903). Peirce augments this claim with the pronouncement that there are alternate means to come to the truth after operating on several hunches, which demonstrates the need for habit change. In fact, this unrelenting seeking for the best explanation comes unbidden from “our dear and adorable creator” (NEM III: 206; 1911).^[2] Abductions then extend naturally to guessing right even though, in 1895, Peirce indicates that guessing can in fact be wrong on many occasions (EP 2: 24). Nonetheless, eventually we come to guess right by natural means:

Thus, suppose a quantity of inscriptions to be found in a wholly unknown mode of writing and in an unknown tongue. To find out what that writing means, we have to begin with some guess. We should naturally make the most likely guess we possibly could; and that is an inference. Yet it is considerably more likely to be wrong than right. (EP 2: 24)

The fact that abductions can be fallible suggests that human agency enters in (consciously or unconsciously) to exert some form of control over the integration of the arguments making up the hunch: “The abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash. It is an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight” (CP 5.181; 1903). Although hunches come to us in a “flash” of insight, they are still subject to handling, on the part of the abducer. Consequently, despite the non-deliberate nature of their emergence into the mind, thereafter their viability must be considered by the abducer – and hence consciousness, at least to a minimal degree, must validate the utility of the hunch. Abductions proceed from uncontrolled to controlled thought. By controlled thought Peirce refers to more conscious and rather creative processes. Here abductions are the very essence of habit change, such that they offer a new explanation for an unexpected consequence. In fact, the puzzling itself serves as the impetus to develop novel inferences.

In 1903, Peirce expands upon this process: “The surprising fact, C, is observed; but if A were true, C would be a matter of course…” (CP 5.189). Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. If my assumption is true, then the consequence would surface as a matter of course. Abducers must consider the event in reverse (hence Peirce’s use of “retroduction”); events are turned on their face – from consequence to contributing factors. The non-canonical character of abductions becomes the catalyst for employing indexes consciously to reconstruct event relations. As such retroductions force abducers to transcend automatic and formulaic states of affairs (cause to effect), permitting potential contributory factors to be isolated. In short, without engaging in retroduction (looking back from the puzzling consequence), without tracing back to the precedent events, determining plausible causes would be subject to automatic preconceived templates. In short, forcing one’s self to look backwards at the events which may have led up to the unexpected event appears to be a necessary operation to analyze event relations.

The ultimate purpose of retroduction is to introduce a novel indexical template for a state of affairs – to suggest new action habits: “It will be remarked that the result of both Practical and Scientific Retroduction is to recommend a course of action” (MS 637: 12; 1909).^[3] Peirce’s pragmatic emphasis informs us that prior to making a determination about the viability of inferences, pliability of event relations and reconstitutions of event shape are paramount. Opening up new pathways via indexical relations – one event declaring that another is near in space and/or time – hastens a well-formed course of action to resolve the puzzling finding. As MS 637 indicates, these retroductions give rise to recommendations for new viable courses of thought and action for oneself and/or another.

4 The role of action habit in the ontogeny of abduction

In MS 674 Peirce divulges how the analysis of retroductive reasoning develops into the means to take a habit. Seven stages toward “the supreme art” are outlined here, illustrating the ontogeny of habit change. Here Peirce demonstrates advances in inferential reasoning which culminate at 5;0:^[4]

When once the regular lessons in The Supreme Art are begun, the principal points to be inculcated are these: 1^st, how to make an effort; 2^nd, how to make a great effort, preceded by that mysterious action, or brief voluntary process, (it should be deliberate) by which the various elementary powers that are to be simultaneously put forth on the ‘great effort’ may be coordinated. This power of ‘gathering one’s forces’ is an art (and as such a habit); and is to be cultivated on the same general principles as any other; 3^rd, how a performance is to be facilitated by repetition; 4^th, how it is still more facilitated by intense attention to the precise modes of effort and precise feeling of effort at each stage of the performance; 5^th, how the breaking up of the performance, in its rehearsal, into simpler parts, so as to practice upon each of them separately, facilitates it...(MS 674: 11–14; c.1911).

The first stage entails how to make an effort. This stage largely consists in Firstness,^[5] such that feelings and subjective attention to detailed examination are primary. It is feeling that is responsible for the narrow focus on one particular, undefined object/issue – in this case, what actions can materialize.

The function of index here is critical – modeling corporal and mental pointing, suggesting logical relations proposed to hold concurrently. By performing in episodes, children model their hunches; the performance via action schemas both organize the episode (temporally and spatially) and suggest a cause and effect paradigm.

Nonetheless, neither analysis nor synthesis of action interrelations is operational at this first stage, merely an expressive focus. Hence, in the first stage, only a form of proto-inferencing surfaces. It is so, particularly consequent to the rather mechanical nature of the habit. What is obviated at this stage is a look toward a physical pathway, absent any focus on source and/or goal. Only when inferencing suggests a habit-change can it qualify as abductive reasoning; absent the element of accommodation to an unexpected consequence, any reasoning falls short of truly inferring. For an inference to become abductive, the purpose or relational effect of precedent events to the consequence must be primary.

What differentiates Peirce’s initial stage, “how to make an effort” from the second stage, “how to make a great effort” (MS 674: 11–14; c.1911) is dependence on Secondness, rather than on the category of Firstness which pervades in the initial stage. Peirce characterizes this next level of exercising and harnessing regularities in the physical world as “making a great effort.” In doing so, children begin to coordinate schemes which beforehand were quite disparate, e.g. coordinating vision with reach in prehension (earlier these sense modalities were separate and unrelated schemes). Prehension entails targeted reaching of the hand toward particular objects (Piaget and Inhelder 1966/1969: 9–10). This represents a foundational indexical representation (West 2013: 36), in that it directs cause and effect conduct in a regularized manner – providing a path to access sought-after objects. As such, children’s directed conduct to attain the desired object constitutes a spatial primitive (Mandler 2010: 25; Mandler 2012: 431; West 2016a: 40). By 0;8 children’s indexical use graduates to pointing with an index finger toward an object (Bates 1976: 61). This kind of index individuates objects for ego; it compels the child, himself, to fix his attention on the object, given its salient qualities. This exercise functions as a self-directing behavior; it is not yet social (Bates 1976: 61). At 1;0, pointing toward objects becomes social in nature, when it draws a triangle between three components – the agent, the engaged adult and the topic/object.

Secondness represents the most primary of the categories, consisting of effort and resistance to items in the physical world – these issues come to bear on conceptualization and the guessing instinct. In intersubjective dialogue, the imperative reinsinuates itself on a social level – explicitly expressing the imperative to act, think, or infer in a specific way consonant with the speaker’s frame of reference. The listener must likewise infer and interpret directives based on implications from the speaker’s utterance. This developmental trajectory illustrates the mechanical nature of habit and of Secondness at this age, given the primary place of effort and resistance in this paradigm. As Peirce says, “It is inconceivable that there should be any effort without resistance, or any resistance without a contrary effort. This double-sided consciousness is Secondness” (EP2: 268; 1903).

The third Peircean stage, striving toward the supreme art, is likewise rooted in Secondness, in that its focus is on repetition and coordination of action schemes.^[6] Peirce draws attention to the fact that “a performance [entire sequence] is to be facilitated by repetition” (MS 674: 11–14; c.1911). Behaviors are deliberate, but are still unconscious because a goal is not the primary end, only expressing the conduct/event in its entirety. Although advancement from one action to an action sequence can be actualized at this stage, the action sequences are not ordinarily separable from the consequence; they meld into a global aggregate. Similarly, events are not typically distinct from each other. More particularly, consequences are indistinguishable from contributing events, making discernment of the weight of specific contributions rather challenging, especially for an inexperienced abducer. Once an action is affiliated with a consequence, it is not easily disentangled from the conditions under which it initially surfaced.

The 4th Peircean stage focuses on the means to intensely attend to both feeling and effort simultaneously, although feeling is primary. For Peirce, the feeling is so foundational to the performance that, but for the feeling, the performance would be mere automatic conduct. The feeling is so concentrated that the subject enters into a state of hypostatic abstraction. To reiterate, Peirce defines the import of the fourth stage as follows: “[…] intense attention to the precise modes of effort and precise feeling of effort at each stage of the performance” (MS 674: 11–14; c.1911). At this stage, children synthesize schemes produced at lower levels. Essentially, the fact that an action habit is typically unconscious obviates the necessity of extreme/intense feeling to elevate the automatic behavior to a more conscious one – that self-control may eventually surface. Hence, this intense feeling of effort permits transcendence from automatic conduct to facilitate an awareness of even slight modifications from the original behavior scheme.

In stage 5 of his explanation of how to perfect the “supreme art,” Peirce features practice of mechanical components of each action leading to the consequence: “[…] how the breaking up of the performance, in its rehearsal, into simpler parts, so as to practice upon each of them separately, facilitates it [the performance]” (MS 674: 11–14; c.1911). “Breaking up” the performance constitutes the agent for automatically associating all co-occurring events with co-existing conditions and consequences. Exercising this “breaking up” operation further promotes logical analysis, because it fosters the realization that co-existent factors may not connect logically to one another. What Peirce highlights here is the gradual emergence of a greater level of self-consciousness and self-control during performance of what was likewise once an automatic skill. This effectuates a distinct transition from behaviors which are mechanical only, to those for which reflection and hence change becomes the hallmark.

With the emergence of attentional signs in gesture and language, children are afforded still further opportunities to inject feeling onto their action-based effort, e.g. pointing and demonstratives individuate for others what the child considers to be the “really critical thing!” Children’s “really critical things” amount to implied propositions and assertions which reveal inferences of an individual child. Accordingly, inferences become more explicit with the emergence of names rather than pointing words such as “this” and “that.”^[7] Names emerge somewhat later (after demonstratives), given their increased classificatory/symbolic nature. While demonstratives emerge within the first ten words (Clark 2009: 92), common nouns surface in aggregates slightly later. The demonstrative pronoun “that” and the noun constitute habit beyond the previous stage in that, consequent to their more symbolic status, they require more developed conscious effort. Nonetheless, linguistic pointers (demonstratives and nouns) supersede action habits. Although these terms typically accompany actions (gaze, pointing) to individuate salient objects, they rise to the status of conceptual habits when intrinsic to their interpretants is an implied comparison with other, like objects, e.g. “this” indicating all near objects within the speaker’s focus. In the earliest uses, when demonstratives are accompanied by pointing, their interpretants are largely action-based, and do not imply any similarity to other objects, but, instead may effectuate attentional imperatives (cf. West 2011). In any case, these linguistic pointers (especially in the latter use) constitute indexes impelling the user and the interlocutor to jointly direct attention to something which the signer considers to be important enough to merit individual notice. As such, feeling and effort toward ascertaining the supreme art are obviated.

The supreme art at stage five represents an imperative to self and another that what the child noticed has sufficient merit to enjoin that other to do likewise. This imperative rises to the level of a proposition, because the child has something particularized to tell about the salience of the object under focus. The implied proposition here can take the form of “that [animal] is an X,” which qualifies as a declarative. Alternatively, were an assertion implied it might surface as follows: The signer’s conviction is that it is in the interest of the interlocutor to attend to x.

The last two stages toward reaching the “supreme art” (six, seven) in MS 674 (c.1911), Peirce elevates separate behavior schemes to a deliberate and conscious orchestration of them as an aggregate: 6^th, how, after this analysis [in stage 5], it is advantageous to gain synthetic ideas of several successive steps taken together, and then, by successive enlargements of the synthesis, ultimately to gain a synthetic idea of how to perform the whole, the parts of every such synthesis being held together by each of them being associated with some regular fancy, the same for all of them; and this should be as simple as is compatible with its never (or hardly ever) being allowed to enter consciousness except to call on that synthetic idea. Here Peirce refers to ascertaining a “synthetic idea,” which intimates the existence of a non-natural ultimate vision, conceived of idiosyncratically while seeking the logic of event relations. Peirce’s inclusion of “regular fancy” to hold together the distinctive events into a larger, more pervasive schema demonstrates the influence of Firstness-based creative envisionments/hallucinations to achieve the logical synthesis; and the fact that Peirce insists that they be regular, validates his continued commitment to habit as instinct.

Peirce’s seventh stage likewise commits to the import of synthesis, not derived primarily from impositions of Firstness as in stage six, rather from impulses in Secondness, emanating from effort and resistance:

…7^th, how the facilitation asserted in the 4^th point, where it is caused by attention to feelings, where the attention of the nature of an inward exertion of power, is perhaps even greater when a different kind of exertion is substituted for the attention to feeling, this different kind of exertion being describable to a person who has experienced it as an act of giving a compulsive command to oneself. Some books call it ‘self-hypnotization,’ whatever that may signify. This [is] effective whether there be any ‘disposition’, i.e., any imperfectly developed or otherwise imperfect habit, or not. (MS 674: 11–14; c.1911)

The level of self-control characteristic of this seventh stage supersedes the art of inner focus by icon or envisionment alone. Rather, it relies more heavily upon indexicality in Secondness – the self’s performance of an action or set of actions, which, when orchestrated, defines the future direction of the goal. In other words, enacting the feeling from Firstness supplies more particularized imperative for the individual when it meets implementation in Secondness. In short, the action itself, or being in the process of taking that action, confirms the plausibility of the hypothesis, and propels a viable course of action producing the remedy. Essentially, an image/icon conceived of in Firstness by “selfhypnosis” can easily fade in the absence of a course of directed action (action habit) in Secondness.

The shape of these action habits toward a particular goal constitutes a structure/syntax, primarily indexical; but such motility-based structures are not without a semantic component. This meaning-based component constitutes not merely a proposition, but an implied assertion/argument, in that a planned course of conduct to ascertain a particular consequence demonstrates the performer’s belief habit of the action plan’s utility. Because in propositions, arguments are not explicit, they do not expressly contain assertions/explanations indicating how one behavior/event contributes to the emergence of a surprising consequence.^[8]

Children’s implied propositions (such as targeted reach toward an object) might consist of the implied assertion, “X object is not merely interesting, but is an improved way of picking up the object in question, given its shape, dimensions, and pliability.” Here, propositions in the form of behaviors rise to the level of assertions and arguments, despite their implied nature. The objective of many of these implied assertions/arguments is to suggest another, more viable approach to ascertain the surprising consequence. As such, they serve as imperatives – modeling how to retrieve the sought-after object. Ultimately, guessing right emerges, applying merely to present objects and action habits.

The pivotal place of “action habits” in the development of abductive reasoning is unmistakable. Their representamen constitutes a depiction of the logical relationship between events and the players who take part in them (cf. West 2014: 164–165). Children’s enactment of an event sequence often serves as a proposition, implying that events transition from hunch or inference regarding a certain event or consequence to action and outward communication. Without the ability to test inferences in practice, determinations would not energize the hunch to qualify it as habit.

5 Dialogue as facilitator of inquiry

Peirce makes the argument that determinations, as the epistemological mechanism of virtual habit and the force behind abduction, are rooted in dialogue. In 1908, Peirce posits to Lady Welby that, “all thinking necessarily is a sort of dialogue, it is an appeal from the momentary self to the better considered self from the immediate self to the self that is general and future” (SS: 195). This dialogue constitutes a viable action habit and a supreme art – not merely as intersubjective communication to recommend a course of action (MS 637: 12; 1909), but as internal dialogue to command the self to take up a new action habit. This is a forerunner of Vygotskyan intrasubjectivity; this inner dialogue carries a command or imperative to behave in a certain way under certain circumstances, thus directing and shaping subsequent inferences (cf. West 2015d).^[9] The process of commanding the self to take up a course of action solidifies what once were fleeting beliefs – making them determinations. Through self-talk or inner speech, children specify the integral structure of how events logically serve one another; then they enact such – and find greater success targeting action to goals/consequences.

Once inner speech begins making explicit arguments which were implicit, they can then obviate inferences; and decisions regarding which inferences are explanatorily adequate can be proffered. It is obvious then, that internalization liberates the working memory system – by providing increased utility for operations of inferential reasoning.^[10] The resources which were needed in working memory to identify viable factors contributing to the surprising consequence and to articulate them (step-by-step) can then be filled with determinations of how unexpected consequences materialize. At this juncture, when thought and language become one and when signs become more mental, working memory has increased means to administer semiotic and logical relations. This paradigm of giving voice may well proceed according to Vygotsky’s paradigm of: articulated arguments, to whispered arguments, and finally to a form of inner speech – arguments which mature in the mind (Vygotsky 1934/1962: 16–17, 149). This shift in the functionality of working memory resources permits children to more effectively reflect upon a greater number of arguments simultaneously, establishing new means to govern facts, would-be’s, and possibilities. The internalization of language actuates a higher and more efficient course of mental action – integrating assumptions and determining which hunches are reasonable about states of affairs. This higher mental capacity introduces new habits (habit change), which ultimately facilitates abductive reasoning.

Inner/intersubjective dialogue provides a new forum to repackage action icons into more symbolic signs, and to convert energetic Interpretants into Logical ones. Children ascertain new Logical Interpretants by using more refined semiotic instrument.^[11] Furthermore, alterations in the objects and interpretants of indexes give rise to new semiotic instruments; and learning to use these instruments to advance the state of logic toward reaching the “supreme art” is Peirce’s primary objective. Engaging in intersubjective dialogue demonstrates how indexes are responsible for advancing to higher levels of semiotic functioning – from physical signs to physical objects virtually devoid of an interpretant, to linguistic indexes whose objects and interpretants trace perspective-shifts. In the latter case, indexes shape either intrasubjective event constructions, or alternation of event partners.

6 Conclusion

Peirce’s Index constitutes an indispensable tool to foster inferential reasoning. It hastens discovery of event relations – clarifying unspoken assumptions by utilizing inner dialogue to enact them. As such, regularized action or action habits (courses of action) frame and reframe implied arguments to make them explicit.

Indexes serve necessary path-finding functions; they show where to situate events within a logical framework, informing the abducer how to proceed from consequences to premises and from one premise to another. Peirce encapsulates the ontogeny of this process in MS 674 (c.1911), when he demonstrates how his phenomenological categories (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) bring the abducer to increasingly higher levels of physical and mental control over logical determinations – initially through hypostatic abstractions in Firstness, and afterward via action habits in Secondness. Mediating between the two is inner dialogue that prepares the abducer to handle event trajectories through action habits. These enactments transcend mimetic processes, in that they are idiosyncratically conceived insights (not intersubjectively derived) fashioned from material elements of instinct. These primary Firstnesses are then bundled into Secondnesses when regulated courses of action, in turn, shed light upon novel event relations.