David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
Learn more about PhilPapers
Philosophy of Science 66 (3):451 (1999)
Charles S. Peirce argued that, besides deduction and induction, there is a third mode of inference which he called "hypothesis" or "abduction." He characterized abduction as reasoning "from effect to cause," and as "the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis." Peirce's ideas about abduction, which are related also to historically earlier accounts of heuristic reasoning (the method of analysis), have been seen as providing a logic of scientific discovery. Alternatively, abduction is interpreted as giving reasons for pursuing a hypothesis. Inference to the best explanation (IBE) has also been regarded as an important mode of justification, both in everyday life, detective stories, and science. In particular, scientific realism has been defended by an abductive nomiracle argument (Smart, Putnam, Boyd), while the critics of realism have attempted to show that this appeal to abduction is question-begging, circular, or incoherent (Fine, Laudan, van Fraassen). This paper approaches these issues by distinguishing weaker and stronger forms of abduction, and by showing how these types of inferences can be given Peircean and Bayesian probabilistic reconstructions
|Keywords||No keywords specified (fix it)|
|Categories||categorize this paper)|
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server
Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy)
|Through your library|
References found in this work BETA
No references found.
Citations of this work BETA
Adolfas Mackonis (2013). Inference to the Best Explanation, Coherence and Other Explanatory Virtues. Synthese 190 (6):975-995.
G. Schurz (2008). Patterns of Abduction. Synthese 164 (2):201 - 234.
Michael Huemer (2009). Explanationist Aid for the Theory of Inductive Logic. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2):345-375.
Jun-Young Oh (2014). Understanding Natural Science Based on Abductive Inference: Continental Drift. [REVIEW] Foundations of Science 19 (2):153-174.
Fernando Tohmé & Ricardo Crespo (2013). Abduction in Economics: A Conceptual Framework and its Model. Synthese 190 (18):4215-4237.
Similar books and articles
Sami Paavola (2011). Abductive Cognition: The Epistemological and Eco-Cognitive Dimensions of Hypothetical Reasoning (Review). Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (2):252-256.
Jaime Nubiola (2005). Abduction or the Logic of Surprise. Semiotica 153 (1/4):117-130.
Michael Hoffmann (1999). Problems with Peirce's Concept of Abduction. Foundations of Science 4 (3):271-305.
Valeriano Iranzo (2007). Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation. Theoria 22 (3):339-346.
Woosuk Park (2012). Abduction and Estimation in Animals. Foundations of Science 17 (4):321-337.
Michael H. G. Hoffmann (2010). "Theoric Transformations" and a New Classification of Abductive Inferences. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 46 (4):570-590.
Ilkka Niiniluoto (2007). Abduction and Scientific Realism. The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 12:137-142.
Sami Paavola (2004). Abduction as a Logic and Methodology of Discovery: The Importance of Strategies. [REVIEW] Foundations of Science 9 (3):267-283.
Gerhard Minnameier (2004). Peirce-Suit of Truth – Why Inference to the Best Explanation and Abduction Ought Not to Be Confused. Erkenntnis 60 (1):75-105.
Added to index2009-01-28
Total downloads68 ( #25,335 of 1,413,402 )
Recent downloads (6 months)14 ( #15,295 of 1,413,402 )
How can I increase my downloads?