Abductive Reasoning: Challenges Ahead

The motivation behind the collection of papers presented in this THEORIA forum on Abductive reasoning is my book Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into the Processes of Discovery and Explanation. These contributions raise fundamental questions. One of them concerns the conjectural characte...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Atocha ALISEDA
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2007
País:México
Institución:Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Repositorio:Redalyc-UNAM
OAI Identifier:oai:redalyc.org:339730804001
Acceso en línea:https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=339730804001
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Filosofía
Abduction
discovery
heuristics
abductive inference
Descripción
Sumario:The motivation behind the collection of papers presented in this THEORIA forum on Abductive reasoning is my book Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into the Processes of Discovery and Explanation. These contributions raise fundamental questions. One of them concerns the conjectural character of abduction. The choice of a logical framework for abduction is also discussed in detail, both its inferential aspect and search strategies. Abduction is also analyzed as inference to the best explanation, as well as a process of epistemic change, both of which challenge the argument-like format of abduction. Finally, the psychological question of whether humans reason abductively according to the models proposed is also addressed. I offer a brief summary of my book and then comment on and respond to several challenges that were posed to my work by the contributors to this issue.