Menno Rol wrote: “The heart of the epistemology of Pierce can be formulated as the claim that sticking to old
beliefs is a man's normal inclination and that this is in fact rational.”

I agree. However, Menno Rol also wrote: “In order to learn, we update old beliefs with a certain unwillingness
in the face of counterevidence, facts that we stumble upon daily. The updating process runs via hypothesis
making: inference to the best explanation. What counts as the best explanation depends not only on the newly
encountered facts, but just as much - or even more - on our old beliefs. Again, this is rational.”

I disagree with Menno Rol here because scholars, who run into counter-evidence or refuting reasoning, do not
always change their minds or update their beliefs. I think the reason is that “epistemic costs” in scholarly
life are significantly high.

Epistemic costs, to my understanding, refer to the costs involved in operating the various scholarly
arrangements such as collecting data, drafting papers, arguing with other scholars, and replicating the results
of old models. Epistemic costs are sometimes so high that, for example, errors that scholars made in the past
such as plagiarism and deterioration of data are not always remediable today. As a consequence, scholars
sometimes keep reproducing erroneous models. There are at least two reasons for this: (1) there is almost no
reward in the academy in going back to the models and explanations of older generations and (2) it is sometimes
impossible to replicate what older generations wrote. This suggests that the scholarly world is a world of
positive epistemic costs in which negative externalities are not always and perfectly self-corrective. Perfect
solutions do not come about so easily because scholarly mechanisms, such as refereeing and reviewing as well as
the ethics of scholarly behaviour and certain codes of act, including the issue of liability, that help increase
the productivity of scientific processes, cannot fully correct or cure the harmful consequences of individual
scholarship. The problem of epistemic cost is that we do NOT “update old beliefs” in the face of
counter-evidence and errors frequently remain uncorrected.

Reminding the SHOE-List Ramzi Mabsout’s original question: would anybody suggest any cases in which old habits
of thought prevent scholars from changing their minds despite the fact that there is sufficient evidence to
abandon a refuted paradigm?

Best wishes,

Altug Yalcintas, Ankara University

---

> Dear Menno Rol, It's been a long time since I read Pierce (or tried to read him), but the way you describe "the
> heart of the epistemology of Pierce" doesn't sound very different from common sense, Bayes, or  the recognition
> of the interplay of the algorithmic and the experiential in what we know.  (Algorithmic = what we know from
> logical deduction from "self-evident" first principles; experiential = what we know from intuition, authority,
> pretty much what you call "old beliefs.") I remember being taught (and believing) that Pierce was radically more
> than, and radically different from, a procedure for updating our knowledge in the light of new evidence.  Steve
> Marglin
>
> From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of M.E.G.M.Rol
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:07 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [SHOE] Retroduction / abduction in economics and elsewhere
>
> [sorry for a broken off mail sent a minute ago.]
>
> The heart of the epistemology of Pierce can be formulated as the claim that sticking to old beliefs is a man's
> normal inclination and that this is in fact rational. In order to learn, we update old beliefs with a certain
> unwillingness in the face of counterevidence, facts that we stumble upon daily. The updating process runs via
> hypothesis making: inference to the best explanation. What counts as the best explanation depends not only on
> the newly encountered facts, but just as much - or even more - on our old beliefs. Again, this is rational.
> Economics develops ever more into the direction of a science of information exchange - think of Levitt &
> Dubner's "Freakonmics", Constanze Binder's "Agency, Freedom and Choice" and Frydman & Goldberg's "Imperfect
> Knowledge Economics". If this is true, then it seems that Pierce's approach becomes ever more relevant for
> economists.
>
> For Mario Rizzo, as to the difficulty of his philosophy: for a good study of the relevance of Pierce in science
> in general, see:
> Atocha Aliseda (1997) "Seeking explanations", Dissertation Stanford, ILLC Dissertation Series, Amsterdam.
> Aliseda uses the basic ideas now for her research on diagnostic reasoning by medical staff.
>
> Menno Rol,
> Groningen, The Netherlands
>
>
> On 15-02-13, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Ramzi Mabsout,
>
> You asked the SHOE-List about case studies on Peirce's abductive reasoning. The following publications on
> Peirce's philosophy in economics might be of interest to you, although I am not quite sure to what extent they
> can be considered case studies:
>
> James Wible. 1998. The Economics of Science: Methodology and Epistemology as if Economics Really Mattered.
> Routledge. (See: Chapter 4. Also: check Index.)
> A. W. Dyer. 1986. "Veblen on Scientific Creativity: The Influence of Charles S. Peirce" Journal of Economic
> Issues 20(1)
> Altug Yalcintas. 2013. "The Problem of Epistemic Cost" American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72 (5)
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Altug Yalcintas, Ankara University
>
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> Would you be aware of any case studies (current or historical) or
>> concrete examples of Peirce's retroductive / abductive inferences in
>> economics (preferably) and the social sciences?
>>
>> I know Tony Lawson and Philip Mirowski discuss and offer some examples
>> but not much else.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>>
>> Ramzi Mabsout
>> Assistant professor
>> Economics department
>> American University of Beirut
>>
>
>