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A Mastermind player uses abduction to infer the secret colors (top) from summaries (bottom left) of discrepancies in their guesses (bottom right).. Abductive reasoning (also called abduction, [1] abductive inference, [1] or retroduction [2]) is a form of logical inference that seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from a set of observations.
Doctors use abductive reasoning when investigating the symptoms of a patient to determine their underlying cause. Abductive reasoning plays a central role in science when researchers discover unexplained phenomena. In this case, they often resort to a form of guessing to come up with general principles that could explain the observations.
Other forms of reasoning are sometimes also taken to be part of logic, such as inductive reasoning and abductive reasoning, which are forms of reasoning that are not purely deductive, but include material inference. Similarly, it is important to distinguish deductive validity and inductive validity (called "strength").
Abductive logic programming (ALP) is a high-level knowledge-representation framework that can be used to solve problems declaratively, based on abductive reasoning. It extends normal logic programming by allowing some predicates to be incompletely defined, declared as abducible predicates. Problem solving is effected by deriving hypotheses on ...
The duck test is a frequently cited colloquial example of abductive reasoning. Its usual expression is: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject's habitual characteristics.
Argumentation schemes can include inferences based on different types of reasoning—deductive, inductive, abductive, probabilistic, etc. The study of argumentation schemes (under various names) dates back to the time of Aristotle , and today argumentation schemes are used for argument identification, argument analysis, argument evaluation, and ...
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. [1] It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans.
Abductive reasoning – Inference seeking the simplest and most likely explanation – from data and theory: p and q are correlated, and q is sufficient for p; hence, if p then (abducibly) q as cause; Deductive reasoning – Form of reasoning – from meaning postulate, axiom, or contingent assertion: if p then q (i.e., q or not-p)