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.

Reasoning, robots, and navigation: Dual roles for deductive and abductive reasoning

Abstract: Mercier & Sperber (M&S) argue for their argumentative theory in terms of communicative abilities. Insights can be gained by extending the discussion beyond human reasoning to rodent and robot navigation. The selection of arguments and conclusions that are mutually reinforcing can be cast as a form of abductive reasoning that I argue underlies the construction of cognitive maps in navigation tasks.

Creating Essential Hypothesis and Rules in Product Planning -- Introducing Abductive Inference Model

Abstract: The abductive inference model has been discussed in the context of business strategy However, the model seems unrealistic for applications in the real business world Therefore, this study improves the model by formalizing experimental case studies in a web-based workplace for generating product ideas The developed model implies the needs for visualizing human's thought process to create hypothesis and rules in product planning is a clue to designing data market place

Learning Abduction Under Partial Observability.

Abstract: Juba recently proposed a formulation of learning abductive reasoning from examples, in which both the relative plausibility of various explanations, as well as which explanations are valid, are learned directly from data. The main shortcoming of this formulation of the task is that it assumes access to full-information (i.e., fully specified) examples; relatedly, it offers no role for declarative background knowledge, as such knowledge is rendered redundant in the abduction task by complete information. In this work, we extend the formulation to utilize such partially specified examples, along with declarative background knowledge about the missing data. We show that it is possible to use implicitly learned rules together with the explicitly given declarative knowledge to support hypotheses in the course of abduction. We observe that when a small explanation exists, it is possible to obtain a much-improved guarantee in the challenging exception-tolerant setting. Such small, human-understandable explanations are of particular interest for potential applications of the task.

The Role of Deductive Reasoning in Scientific Activities

Abstract: What does mean the statement that scientific reasoning is logical? In this study, we clarify the logical structure of the scientific explanation, prediction and the process of hypothesis testing. To simplify and identify the structure of scientific explanations and prediction more clearly, we used syllogism and presented various concrete examples. Especially, we showed that the logical structure of scientific explanation was well reflected in dynamics. Based on this analysis, it can be said that the deficit of students' understanding of dynamics is because that many scientific activities are focused on prediction rather than explanation. To explain the process of hypothesis testing, we reinterpreted the Wason's selection task as two stages: the process of prediction of experimental phenomena based on the presented hypothesis, and the process of the hypothesis testing based on the predicted experimental phenomena. And we suggested the reason of the logical fallacy of 'affirming the consequent' in science was because that many scientific relationships between the variables is one-to-one relationship, and compared this suggestion with the Lawon's multiple hypothesis theory. To check out the effect of content on the deductive reasoning, we reviewed some researches about psychology and psychology of science. And to understand the role of deductive reasoning in student's scientific activities, we reviewed researches about the analysis of students' responses in the task of conceptual change or evaluation of evidence and so on.

What is (Correct) Practical Reasoning

Abstract: This paper argues that practical reasoning is a mental process which leads a person from a set of existent mental states to an intention. In Section 1, I defend this view against two other proposals according to which practical reasoning either concludes in an action itself or in a normative belief. Section 2 discusses the correctness of practical reasoning and explains how the correctness of instrumental reasoning can be explained by the logical relations that hold between the contents of the mental states. In Section 3, I explore the correctness of normative practical reasoning. I conclude with the sceptical view that correct practical reasoning cannot require us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do.