Inference, Guiding Principles, and Ideas: Comments on Richard Atkins’ Peirce on Inference

Abstract: In this commentary, I draw a lineage from William Whewell’s account of ideas to what Richard Atkins insightfully singles out and develops as Peirce’s account of “hypothetic induction” in his excellent book Peirce on Inference. I argue that Whewell is a key (and yet still much-neglected) interlocutor for Peirce, and that Peirce’s grappling with Whewell’s account of ideas in induction set him on a process of pragmatic clarification, which resulted precisely in his formulation of hypothetic induction and the role of guiding principles within it.