[FRIAM] abduction and casuistry

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Admittedly without more context -- and in my ignorance, my first reaction is to accuse you (and Gladwell) of a category error. The criminologist doesn't sound like he's advocating anything like casuistry (or what I'd argue is the inferential purpose of abduction). He seems to be arguing for something closer to non- or anti-deontological reasoning ... The only rule is that there are no rules.

It's reasonable, of course, for a self-described monist to hunt for the Grand Unified Rule of Reality, the master equation that need only have all it's many (even countably infinite) variables *bound* to values for the answer to bubble forth like from an oracle. But people like me might react: "Of COURSE, you have to look at the particulars of every situation because *any* predicate you infer (by hook or crook) will always be wrong." This is why I'm a supporter of jury trials, as I've argued here in the past.

Is the criminologist truly engaging in an inferential process by which he builds rules to (completely, perfectly) shrink-wrap multiple particulars?  Or is the criminologist more of a pluralist, open to the failure of any given predicate he may infer?

On 8/20/19 12:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Once you become aware of abduction as a mental operation, you start to see it everywhere.  I saw it in Malcom Gladwell’s three part series (  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-standard-case/id1119389968?i=1000444756825; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-rocks-taxonomy/id1119389968?i=1000445285031; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/descend-into-the-particular/id1119389968?i=1000445850049)on Jesuitical casuistry.  I always thought of casuistry as a form of sophistry or hypocrisy, but apparently it began is as method for incorporating the new experiences that global travel brought to the 16^th Century Catholic World.  As an inquiry into the identity of a particular case, it looks a lot like abduction to me.  Because many of you live in NM, you may take particular interest in the third episode, which presents an analysis of the Angelo Navarro shooting by Albuquerque police. Was it case of a violent man charging the police with a weapon?  Or was it the case of a
> racially motivated firing squad of unarmed men by heavily armed police?  Or, ….? You would get a lot of benefit from just listening to this one episode, but to fully understand its philosophical impact, you need the other two to set the context.

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