This paper makes use of the concepts and theoretical framework developed within the field of Argumentation Theory to account for the structure and characteristics of abduction and of the comparative processes of weighing explanatory hypothesis. It elaborates an analysis of abduction based on its consideration as a meta-explanatory argumentation scheme while elucidating its relations with abductive reasoning and inference. The conceptualization of comparative processes of weighing explanatory hypothesis as complex and varied argumentative structures is presented as an alternative to the (...) idea of providing a formally rigid and supposedly universal account of ‘inference to the best explanation’. (shrink)

According to the traditional requirement, formulated by William Whewell in his account of the “consilience of inductions” in 1840, a scientific hypothesis should have unifying power in the sense that it explains and predicts several mutually independent phenomena. Variants of this notion of consilience or unification include deductive, inductive, and approximate systematization. Inference from surprising phenomena to their theoretical explanations was called abduction by Charles Peirce. As a unifying theory is independently testable by new kinds of phenomena, it should also (...) receive confirmation from its empirical success. The study of the prospects of probabilistic Bayesianism to motivate this kind of criterion for abductive confirmation is shown to lead to two quite distinct conceptions of unification. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the ultimate argument for Scientific Realism, also known as the No-Miracles Argument (NMA), ultimately fails as an abductive defence of Epistemic Scientific Realism (ESR), where (ESR) is the thesis that successful theories of mature sciences are approximately true. The NMA is supposed to be an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) that purports to explain the success of science. However, the explanation offered as the best explanation for success, namely (ESR), fails to yield independently (...) testable predictions that alternative explanations for success do not yield. If this is correct, then there seems to be no good reason to prefer (ESR) over alternative explanations for success. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, just as the problem of unconceived alternatives provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Science to the effect that a realist view of science is unwarranted, the problem of unconceived objections provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Philosophy to the effect that a realist view of philosophy is unwarranted. I raise this problem not only for skepticism’s sake but also for the sake of making a (...) point about philosophical argumentation, namely, that anticipating objections to one’s claim is not the same as supporting one’s claim. In other words, defending p from objections does not amount to support or evidence for p. This, in turn, presents dialectical and pragma-dialectical approaches to argumentation with the following question: does proper argumentation require that arguers anticipate and respond to unconceived objections? (shrink)

Abductive problems and their solutions are presented by means of justification logic. We introduce additional meta-constructions in order to generate and compare different solutions to the same abductive problem. Our approach has three advantages: (i) it makes structurally explicit the solution to an abductive problem (as it has a syntactic nature); (ii) it gives a precise meaning to the notion of evidence; (iii) it provides clear definitions and procedures for the comparison of solutions that can be adapted to different needs.

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

Bayesianism and Inference to the best explanation are two different models of inference. Recently there has been some debate about the possibility of “bayesianizing” IBE. Firstly I explore several alternatives to include explanatory considerations in Bayes’s Theorem. Then I distinguish two different interpretations of prior probabilities: “IBE-Bayesianism” and “frequentist-Bayesianism”. After detailing the content of the latter, I propose a rule for assessing the priors. I also argue that Freq-Bay: endorses a role for explanatory value in the assessment of scientific hypotheses; (...) avoids a purely subjectivist reading of prior probabilities; and fits better than IBE-Bayesianism with two basic facts about science, i.e., the prominent role played by empirical testing and the existence of many scientific theories in the past that failed to fulfil their promises and were subsequently abandoned. (shrink)

Una cuestión controvertida en la teoría bayesiana de la confirmación es el estatus de las probabilidades iniciales. Aunque la tendencia dominante entre los bayesianos es considerar que la única constricción legítima sobre los valores de dichas probabilidades es la consistencia formal con los teoremas de la teoría matemática de la probabilidad, otros autores -partidarios de lo que se ha dado en llamar "bayesianismo objetivo"- defienden la conveniencia de restricciones adicionales. Mi propuesta, en el marco del bayesianismo objetivo, recoge una sugerencia (...) de Wesley Salmon. No obstante, mientras que para Salmon las probabilidades iniciales se justifican en tanto incorporan la frecuencia de éxito de las hipótesis del pasado, el factor decisivo en mi opinión es el éxito probabilístico de las hipótesis del pasado. Así, la asignación de una probabilidad inicial a una hipótesis h será correcta si refleja el éxito probabilístico de hipótesis del pasado semejantes a h. En esta línea, propongo una regla para fijar las probabilidades iniciales de las hipótesis, y acabo discutiendo algunas objeciones generales en contra de mi planteamiento. One of the most controversial issues for Bayesian theory of confirmation concerns the status of prior probabilities. Orthodox Bayesianism claims that logical consistency with the theorems of mathematical theory of probability is the only constraint on prior probabilities, while some authors claim for further requirements. I agree with the latter standpoint. My proposal is inspired by Wesley Salmon's frequentist justification of prior probabilities. According to him, prior probabilities are the best assessments of past scientific hypotheses' success. I think that historical information is relevant here, but I propose to focus on a particular sort of success -i.e., "probabilistic success". I claim that a particular prior for h is correct insofar as it reflects the probabilistic success of past scientific hypotheses similar to h. I also suggest a rule to set the priors for contemporary hypotheses. The closing paragraphs are devoted to some general objections against this proposal. (shrink)