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Structural Rules for Abduction

Niiniluoto, Ilkka (2007) Structural Rules for Abduction. THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 22 (3). pp. 325-329. ISSN 2171-679X

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Abstract

Atocha Aliseda’s Abductive Reasoning (2006) gives a structural characterization of the “forward” explana-tory reasoning from a theory to observational data. This paper asks whether there are any interesting struc-tural rules for the “backward” abductive reasoning from observations to explanatory theories. Ignoring sta-tistical cases, a partial explication of abduction is converse deductive explanation: h is abducible from e iff h deductively explains e. This relation of abducibility trivially satisfies Converse Entailment (if h entails e, then h is abducible from e ), but it does not generally satisfy Converse Consequence (if h is abducible from e and g entails h, then g is abducible from e ), since deductive explanation is not always transitive.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Niiniluoto, Ilkkailkka.niiniluoto@helsinki.fi
Additional Information: ISSN: 0495-4548 (print)
Keywords: abduction, deduction, explanation, induction, non-monotonic logic, structural rules
Depositing User: Users 15304 not found.
Date Deposited: 28 Feb 2014 00:40
Last Modified: 11 Mar 2014 21:44
Item ID: 10419
Journal or Publication Title: THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science
Publisher: Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea / Universidad del País Vasco
Official URL: http://www.ehu.es/ojs/index.php/THEORIA/article/vi...
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.1387/theoria.453
Date: 2007
Page Range: pp. 325-329
Volume: 22
Number: 3
ISSN: 2171-679X
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/10419

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