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Abductive reasoning

About: Abductive reasoning is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1917 publications have been published within this topic receiving 44645 citations. The topic is also known as: abduction & abductive inference.


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Dissertation
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: In this paper, a methodological realist position is constructed: realist constraints on the acceptance and pursuit of theories-for instance requirements of intertheoretic coherence, and the avoidance of ad hoc explanation-have often contributed to progress in science.
Abstract: Scientific realists and non-realists disagree over the reach of scientific knowledge: does it extend beyond the observational realm. Intuitions about abductive inferences are at the heart of many realist positions, but are brought into question by the non-realists' contention that theories are underdetermined by data, and the alleged circularity of realist attempts to show that such inferences are reliable. Some realists have tried to circumvent this problem by constructing methodological arguments for realism: if realism is embedded in scientific practice, the realist's picture of science might provide the best explanation of scientific success. Some non-realists reply by again pointing to the circularity of this strategy, which relies, again, on an abductive inference. Others deny that scientists do adopt realist stances. A methodological realist position is constructed: realist constraints on the acceptance and pursuit of theories-for instance requirements of intertheoretic coherence, and the avoidance of ad hoc explanation-have often contributed to progress in science. The position is immune to non-realist worries about the circularity of realist arguments, for it is a thesis about how science is practised, not the kind of knowledge it provides. The argument is pursued within a diachronic account of theory appraisal: Imre Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP) examines the principles that govern the construction of theories, and provides criteria-achievement of progress-for the appraisal of research programmes. Although Lakatos may have seen these selection criteria, when fulfilled, as symptoms of something else-the fulfilment in the theory's development of some ideal of scientific honesty-achievement of Lakatosian progress can Serve as an end in itself. The realist methods mentioned in the last paragraph are then appraised as means to this end. Since the position has a methodological formulation and background, it is applied as a historical thesis to case studies in line with Lakatos' metamethodology. These comprise two explanatory forays into history: the consistency of Bohr's 1913 model of the atom, and the construction by Heisenberg and Schrodinger of the two original formulations of quantum mechanics. There follows one contemporary application: the construction of explanations in quantum chemistry using approximate models of molecules.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is proposed that computers will never have the possibility of natural communication with people unless they become active participants of human society and one mechanism used to keep track of these changes is the Peircian abductive loop.
Abstract: We argue from the Church-Turing thesis (Kleene Mathematical logic. New York: Wiley 1967) that a program can be considered as equivalent to a formal language similar to predicate calculus where predicates can be taken as functions. We can relate such a calculus to Wittgenstein’s first major work, the Tractatus, and use the Tractatus and its theses as a model of the formal classical definition of a computer program. However, Wittgenstein found flaws in his initial great work and he explored these flaws in a new thesis described in his second great work; the Philosophical Investigations. The question we address is “can computer science make the same leap?” We are proposing, because of the flaws identified by Wittgenstein, that computers will never have the possibility of natural communication with people unless they become active participants of human society. The essential difference between formal models used in computing and human communication is that formal models are based upon rational sets whereas people are not so restricted. We introduce irrational sets as a concept that requires the use of an abductive inference system. However, formal models are still considered central to our means of using hypotheses through deduction to make predictions about the world. These formal models are required to continually be updated in response to peoples’ changes in their way of seeing the world. We propose that one mechanism used to keep track of these changes is the Peircian abductive loop.

11 citations

Proceedings Article
03 Aug 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, structural properties of the Abduction instance are used to break the complexity barrier and make the power of SAT solvers available to Abduction, which makes it possible to solve the SAT problem in terms of small backdoor sets.
Abstract: Abductive reasoning (or Abduction, for short) is among the most fundamental AI reasoning methods, with a broad range of applications, including fault diagnosis, belief revision, and automated planning. Unfortunately, Abduction is of high computational complexity; even propositional Abduction is Σ2P-complete and thus harder than NP and co-NP. This complexity barrier rules out the existence of a polynomial transformation to propositional satisfiability (SAT). In this work we use structural properties of the Abduction instance to break this complexity barrier. We utilize the problem structure in terms of small backdoor sets. We present fixed-parameter tractable transformations from Abduction to SAT, which make the power of today's SAT solvers available to Abduction.

11 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202356
2022103
202156
202059
201956
201867