Abductive Reasoning

by Douglas N. Walton

A study of the role of abductive inference in everyday argumentation and legal evidence

Examines three areas in which abductive reasoning is especially medicine, science, and law. The reader is introduced to abduction and shown how it has evolved historically into the framework of conventional wisdom in logic. Discussions draw upon recent techniques used in artificial intelligence, particularly in the areas of multi-agent systems and plan recognition, to develop a dialogue model of explanation. Cases of causal explanations in law are analyzed using abductive reasoning, and all the components are finally brought together to build a new account of abductive reasoning.
 
By clarifying the notion of abduction as a common and significant type of reasoning in everyday argumentation, Abductive Reasoning will be useful to scholars and students in many fields, including argumentation, computing and artificial intelligence, psychology and cognitive science, law, philosophy, linguistics, and speech communication and rhetoric.
 

Genres: Philosophy, Logic

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 20, 2005

About the author

Douglas Neil Walton (PhD University of Toronto, 1972) is a Canadian academic and author, well known for his many widely published books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. He is presently Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Canada, and before that (2008-2014), he held the Assumption Chair of Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor. Walton’s work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence. His books have been translated worldwide, and he attracts students from many countries to study with him. A special issue of the journal Informal Logic surveyed Walton’s contributions to informal logic and argumentation theory up to 2006 (Informal Logic, 27(3), 2007). A festschrift honoring his contributions, Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation: An Examination of Douglas Walton’s Theories of Reasoning and Argument, ed. C. Reed and C. W. Tindale, London: College Publications, 2010, shows how his theories are increasingly finding applications in computer science. A list of titles of many of Walton’s books is given below. Links to preprints of many of his published papers can be found on the website

http://www.dougwalton.ca

Reviews

[rohola zandie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book on one of the most underrated or even forgotten aspects of reasoning and logic. We used to know logic from classical Aristotelian logic (know as deduction) and induction. The deduction is a perfect example of logic as a hard, cold sequence of steps that leads to truth. Induction on the other hand is what we perceive as the engine of science. But the reality is we rarely use these two forms of logic in our everyday life. We depend more on plausible reasoning where we come up with different sets of hypotheses after having some observations about the world. We go out and realize the floor is wet, we conclude it was raining! this doesn't fit into induction or deduction. Though we are taught to think this type of reasoning is full of mistakes and biases, it is the biggest source of common sense for us.
The book stipulates the concept of abductive reasoning in law, artificial intelligence, and scientific discovery. Our AI for example is full of induction in the forms of machine learning we know, even old fashion AI is mostly based on deduction. Though the real gap between current algorithms and real intelligence lies in abductive reasoning: Something that is so easy for humans to do but turned out to be a very hard task for machines. For example, knowing how to come to a specific hypothesis that makes sense to humans based on observations is out of reach for machines right now. Unless we find a way to formalize this and solve the relevant issues we never achieve real intelligence.
In the philosophy of science, on the other hand, our focus on induction as the way we do science might not give a complete picture. Scientists talk to each other just like other people, they engage in dialogues about their hypothesis and use different forms of abductive reasoning. We can't ignore all of these real activities and explain the logic of discovery.

[Declan Nagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best book for enhancing debating skills or argumentation in politics and philosophy domains. It seems to be more catered toward AI reasoning and scientific hypothesis.