Most philosophers agree that abduction (in the sense of Inference to the Best Explanation) is a type of inference that is frequently employed, in some form or other, both in everyday and in scientific reasoning. However, the exact form as well as the normative status of abduction are still matters of controversy. This entry contrasts abduction with other types of inference; points at prominent uses of it, both in and outside philosophy; considers various more or less precise statements of it; (...) discusses its normative status; and highlights possible connections between abduction and Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

This paper discusses abductive reasoning---that is, reasoning in which explanatory hypotheses are formed and evaluated. First, it criticizes two recent formal logical models of abduction. An adequate formalization would have to take into account the following aspects of abduction: explanation is not deduction; hypotheses are layered; abduction is sometimes creative; hypotheses may be revolutionary; completeness is elusive; simplicity is complex; and abductive reasoning may be visual and non-sentential. Second, in order to illustrate visual aspects of hypothesis formation, the paper describes (...) recent work on visual inference in archaeology. Third, in connection with the evaluation of explanatory hypotheses, the paper describes recent results on the computation of coherence. (shrink)

Whether abduction is treated as an argument or as an inference, the mainstream view presupposes a tight connection between abduction and inference to the best explanation. This paper critically evaluates this link and supports a narrower view on abduction. Our main thesis is that merely the hypothesis-generative aspect, but not the evaluative aspect, is properly abductive in the sense introduced by C. S. Peirce. We show why equating abduction with IBE unnecessarily complicates argument evaluation by levelling the status of abduction (...) as a third reasoning mode. We also propose a scheme for abductive argument along with critical questions, and suggest retaining abduction alongside IBE as related but distinct categories. (shrink)

Modern logic is undergoing a cognitive turn, side-stepping Frege’s ‘antipsychologism’. Collaborations between logicians and colleagues in more empirical fields are growing, especially in research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents. We place this border-crossing research in the context of long-standing contacts between logic and empirical facts, since pure normativity has never been a plausible stance. We also discuss what the fall of Frege’s Wall means for a new agenda of logic as a theory of rational agency, and what (...) might then be a viable understanding of ‘psychologism’ as a friend rather than an enemy of logical theory. (shrink)

In common with a number of other authors I believe that there has been a paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning, specifically the area traditionally labelled as the study of deduction. The deduction paradigm was founded in a philosophical tradition that assumed logicality as the basis for rational thought, and provided binary propositional logic as the agreed normative framework. By contrast, many contemporary authors assume that people have degrees of uncertainty in both premises and conclusions, and reject binary logic (...) as a workable normative system. I discuss a number of questions and challenges for this new psychology of reasoning, including the following: (a) Do we need an alternative normative system, such as Bayesianism, for the new paradigm? (b) Is there any longer a clear distinction between the study of deductive and inductive reasoning, the latter having its own tradition and literature? (c) Precisely how is the integrated study of reasoning and decision making facilitated by the new paradigm? (d) What difficulties with dual-processing approaches need to be resolved, if they are to take us forward? (shrink)

“Selective abduction” is a notion coined by L. Magnani, who contrasts it with the more common notion of “creative abduction”. However, selective abduction may easily be confused with inference to the best explanation. This constitutes a problem, if IBE is reconstructed as an inductive inference. For on the one hand, abduction and induction must be distinct. On the other hand, Gabbay and Woods, but also Hintikka and Kapitan, even include hypothesis selection as part and parcel of the abductive inference per (...) se. Consequently, there seems to be a riddle about what selective abduction clearly means and how it could be distinguished from other forms of reasoning. The contribution tries to solve this problem by explicating selective abduction and embedding it in an overall taxonomy of inferences. (shrink)

An interesting consequence of the structuralist theory of truth approximation, as developed in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism , henceforth ICR, concerns so-called ‘inference to the best explanation’ . It will be argued that this popular rule among scientific realists can better be replaced by, various kinds of, ‘inference to the best theory’.

Theoretical and manipulative abduction conjectures and manipulations : the extra-theoretical dimension of scientific discovery. -- Non-explanatory and instrumental abduction : plausibility, implausibility, ignorance preservation. -- Semiotic brains and artificial minds : how brains make up material cognitive systems. -- Neuromultimodal abduction : pre-wired brains, embidiment, neurospaces. -- Animal abduction : from mindless organisms to srtifactual mediators. -- Abduction, affordances, and cognitive niches : sharing representations and creating chances through cognitive niche construction. -- Abduction in human and logical agents : hasty (...) generalizers, hybrid abducers, fallacies. -- Morphodynamical abduction : causation of hypotheses by attractors dynamics. (shrink)

An interesting consequence of the structuralist theory of truth approximation, as developed in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism, henceforth ICR, concerns so-called ‘inference to the best explanation’. It will be argued that this popular rule among scientific realists can better be replaced by, various kinds of, ‘inference to the best theory’.

This paper describes in some detail a pattern of justification which seems to be part of common sense logic and also part of the logic of scientific investigations. Calling this pattern “abduction,” the paper lays out an “abduction-prediction” model of scientific inference as an update to the traditional hypothetico-deductive model. According to this newer model, scientific theories receive their claims for acceptance and belief from the abductive arguments that support them, and the processes of scientific discovery aim to develop theories (...) with strong abductive support. It is suggested that the study of diagnosis presents a good opportunity for studying abduction under somewhat simpler and more reproducible conditions than occur in scientific discovery. A computer-based diagnostic system is described which provides a small-scale validation of the abduc-tion-prediction model by showing that a version of it can be made precise enough to be implemented and to perform correctly for diagnosis. (shrink)

Given that Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices as an intelligence test with robust psychometric properties is considered to be a good measure of reasoning ability component of general intelligence, particularly its fluid factor, one would expect that uncovering the determinants of APM performance, especially reasoning patterns, could significantly contribute to understanding of intelligence. Our aim in this study was to identify types of reasoning processes involved in solving Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices test. To this end we carried out two studies: one (...) involving eliciting verbal protocols in the form of Socratic tutorial dialogues and one involving controlling eye-fixation patterns. Results suggest that hypotheses generation and testing, involved in solving APM tasks, essentially amounts to abductive reasoning. (shrink)