Integration Of Logical Models In Pragmatic Reasoning Of The Implicative Abduction, Deduction And Induction

Pragmatic reasoning is one of the hotly-debated issues in the research fields of pragmatics. In Logic & Conversation, Grice makes it so salient that the position of inferential pragmatics has been consolidated. Relevance Theory, put forward by Sperber & Wilson, examines cognitively pragmatic reasoning and strengthens the cornerstone for the combination of cognitive science and pragmatic research. However, it is rarely seen to describe formally the cognitive mechanism of pragmatic reasoning starting from the nature of Relevance Theory.This thesis, regarding that pragmatic reasoning in Relevance Theory's viewpoint is characterized by abductive nature as the point of departure, demonstrates the differences and connections between early Peirce's abduction and later Peirce's, and then integrates the early Peirce's abduction as a special case of the later abduction and constructs tentatively the cognitive mechanism of abductive inference. Meantime, induction is endowed with a new interpretation in later Peirce's framework so as to unify the application of abduction, deduction and induction of later Peirce's scientific discovery model in pragmatic reasoning. Putting the logically-integrated model into pragmatic reasoning, communists are able to make the judgment: if hearer receives the"unexpected"information from speaker, abductive inference is employed to construct a hypothesis, namely, to reason out why the speaker replies so non-conventionally and indirectly; then, regarding the result of abductive inference as premise, the hearer deduces a prediction by combining ostensive information of the speaker; finally, the credibility between the prediction and the fact is tested by induction. If the prediction is against the fact, another circle of abduction is needed until the satisfying interpretation is reached.The present study utilizes Peirce's logically-integrated model which is improved by us to tentatively simulate the cognitive mechanism in pragmatic reasoning, with the aim to probe into the mode of thinking of communicational subjects. During the exposition, it is found in certain time that informal logic is probably more convenient than formal logic when conducting the natural language research, yet for this open issue, further argumentation is needed.