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.

Abduction in Human and Logical Agents

Abstract: After having illustrated in the previous chapters the main features of my cognitive-epistemological analysis of abduction, it is necessary to further stress the dynamics involved in the interplay between internal and external representations in the case of logic. This will provide a tool for exploring the relationship between human and logical agents in section 7.1. First of all I will further develop my distinction between creative and mimetic artifacts. As I explained in chapter three these artifacts play the role of external objects (representations) active in what I have called disembodiment of mind. Mimetic external representations mirror concepts and problems that are already represented in the brain and need to be enhanced, solved, further complicated, etc. so they can sometimes creatively give rise to new concepts and meanings. From this perspective the expansion of the minds is, in the meantime, a continuous process of disembodiment of the minds themselves into the material world around them so that the evolution of the mind is inextricably linked with the evolution of many kinds of large, integrated, material cognitive systems. This chapter illustrates some features of this extraordinary interplay by focusing on the construction of logical cognitive systems and its consequences for abductive reasoning.

Abductive case-based reasoning: Research Articles

Abstract: This article introduces abductive case-based reasoning (CBR) and attempts to show that abductive CBR and deductive CBR can be integrated in clinical process and problem solving. Then it provides a unified formalization for integration of abduction, abductive CBR, deduction, and deductive CBR. This article also investigates abductive case retrieval and deductive case retrieval using similarity relations, fuzzy similarity relations, and similarity metrics. The proposed approach demonstrates that the integration of deductive CBR and abductive CBR is of practical significance in problem solving such as system diagnosis and analysis, and will facilitate research of abductive CBR and deductive CBR. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 20: 957–983, 2005.

On metatheoretic properties of logic-based abductive inference

Abstract: Many researches in artificial intelligence have been devoted so far to logic-based abductive inference. However, as far as one knows, the problem of characterizing metatheoretic properties of abduction has not been addressed till now. The author contributes to filling this gap. Abductive inference is abstractly considered a relation between a theory, an observation, a preference criterion and a hypothesis. Metatheoretic properties of this relation are pointed out and discussed.