Brain Endowments and the Interpretation of Natural Signs

We have known for some time that bits of evidence function as signs, or clues. (Sherlock Holmes knew this.) But we do not have a good sense of what it is in us or in the cosmos that enables us to take little bits of evidence and extract from them, possibilities, conjectures, and, even, conclusions (inferences) that reach far beyond the evidence that seems to inspire or provoke them. Now we may have some further support for a conjecture about part of the answer. The source of that support? Pigeons.

Birds are excellent navigators. Indeed, they are phenomenal navigators. But scientists have not been able to explain very well how birds, with their teeny-weeny brains, manage their navigational feats of derring-do. It has been suspected that the answer lies in the ability of birds to detect earth's magnetic fields. But no one has been able to demonstrate the part of the anatomy of birds that enables them to detect and interpret magnetic fields. Until now. See James Gorman, Study Sheds Light on How Pigeons Navigate by Magnetic Field NYTimes (April 26, 2012). It appears that there are "cells in a pigeon’s brain that record detailed information on the earth’s magnetic field." Id.
Stunning. So is there also reason to believe that human brains are also soft-wired with devices that facilitate the interpretation of tiny "evidentiary clues," sensory signals, or "natural signs"? It must be so, yes? The conscious mind -- explicit human thought -- is not by itself capable of extracting all the things (some of them "true," or, in any event, indicative or suggestive of true propositions) that human beings, like pigeons, manage to extract from the environment.
This may not be "intelligent design." But it is, in a way, a kind of harmony of the spheres, a harmony between the internal mechanisms of organisms -- such as pigeons and human beings -- and their "environment" (the cosmos). The only really peculiar thing about the human animal is that it is able, sometimes, to also deploy conscious thought -- explicit ratiocination -- to interpret eeny-weeny signs, or hints(?), in its environment.
Or so I speculate.

• Cf. the second part of my essay Are There Universal Principles or Forms of Evidential Inference? Of Inference Networks and Onto-Epistemology in J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, eds., Crime, Procedure, and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context (Hart Publishing, 2008) & William Twining, Philip Dawid & Dimitra Vasilaki, eds., Evidence, Inference and Enquiry (Oxford & British Academy, 2011).

The mighty pigeon...

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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan.

Inference from Signs

People long ago -- in the ancient Greek world -- talked much about inference from signs. Indeed, what we today call factual inference was not discussed under the heading "evidence," which then had a quite different meaning. See James Allen, Inference from Signs: Ancient Debates about the Nature of Evidence (Clarendon 2001). By the late 19th century talk about inference from signs was largely passe [accent over the "e"]. However, Charles Saunders Peirce revived talk about signs. The strange breed of theorists known as semioticians aside, scholars today do not think about signs the way the ancients did. Rather, theorizing about signs is viewed an adjunct to abductive inference. However, the ancient debates about inference from signs -- or, in any event, some of those debates -- may be pertinent to modern theorizing about drawing inferences about matters such as human writings and utterances. Moreover, although we do not want to import "intelligent design" theories into modern theorizing about inference, some sort of talk about evidence as some sort of cosmic "sign" may be necessary -- because, as Einstein and others have noted, that the universe is or can become (to some degree) intelligible to the human mind is a great mystery (and it is doubtful that crude forms of evolutionary biology will resolve this mystery in a non-circular way).

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.