How to learn abduction from animals? from avicenna to magnani

Abstract

Magnani’s recent discussion of animal abduction sheds considerable light on both instinctual and inferential character of Peircean abduction. Inspired by this, I elsewhere noted some analogies and disanalogies between Avicenna’s ideas on estimative faculty of animals and Peirce’s and Magnani’s views on animal abduction. Also, I confirmed the dividing role and function of the Beast-Machine controversy in the history of the study of animal cognition. In this paper, I propose to discuss rather extensively some of the most salient differences between Avicenna and Peirce-Magnani. Unlike estimation that only allows animals to sense what is insensible, i.e., intentions, abduction in both Peirce and Magnani is applicable to all perceptions. In order to appreciate the implications of such a contrast, I shall try to shed a light on Peirce’s well-known view of perception in the context of animal cognition by emphasizing the double aspect of abduction as inference and instinct. Further, I shall present an interpretation of Magnani’s recent studies of abduction as a sustained effort to answer how to learn abduction from animals by expanding Peircean view of perception as abduction.