Talk:Abductive reasoning

Comparative paragraph on inductive reasoning is unlike the main Inductive reasoning article

Jochen Burghardt correctly reverted my change to the paragraph on Inductive reasoning (diff here) because I got $a$ and $b$ the wrong way around. I would still like to make this change, or something like it, because I find this paragraph put in terms which are at first sight quite different from the main article on Induction, which says:

Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a body of observations is synthesized to come up with a general principle.

This paragraph is in fact saying approximately the same thing, but if (like me) someone comes to wikipedia to learn about the detail of the differences of these forms of reasoning, it would be easier if all these related articles which refer to each other were reasonably consistent in their definitions.

My change is a small step; I think there should be a descriptive sentence in addition to the mathematical sentence, ideally identical to the first sentence in Inductive reasoning.

Dan Shearer (talk) 11:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Jochen Burghardt said:

My point is that the computations are hardly "observations" in a natural-science sense. I'd prefer to call $a$ a "body of knowledge", rather than "body of observations".

Ok, and when I explicitly discount definitions from Information Science, I think you are right. The general definition of "knowledge" is about familiarity of all kinds, which could be a list of numbers, outcome of computations or noting what happens when I shout "ouch!". How about:

Inductive reasoning is the process of inferring some general principle $b$ from a body of knowledge $a$, where $b$ does not necessarily follow from $a$

I thought of adding "and $b$ can be falsifiable", but then remembered I would need to check Popper's argument against this, and note that the article on inductive reasoning does not even mention falsifiability, and left that for another time.

As for an easy-to-grasp synopsis of deduction, induction, and abduction, what about repeating the beans example from section Abductive_reasoning#Deduction,_Induction,_and_Hypothesis_(1878), or varying it a little bit? - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 17:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

An example is not quite the same as a definition so that example won't be good enough on its own. But I will look at changing all three to be consistent, because I think you are right.

Dan Shearer (talk) 21:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with both of your today's suggestions. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 22:15, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

New book

Igor Douven, "The Art of Abduction", https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14179.001.0001 . Looks relevant. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 01:24, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Example on inductive reasoning actually a case of abductive reasoning

From the current article:

For example, if all swans that we have observed so far are white, we may induce that the possibility that all swans are white is reasonable. We have good reason to believe the conclusion from the premise, but the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed. (Indeed, it turns out that some swans are black.)

From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/:

The mere fact that an inference is based on statistical data is not enough to classify it as an inductive one. You may have observed many gray elephants and no non-gray ones, and infer from this that all elephants are gray, because that would provide the best explanation for why you have observed so many gray elephants and no non-gray ones.

Which source is correct, and how can the adequate revisions be made, if necessary? 81.2.179.53 (talk) 18:48, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the characterisation of induction as inferring a general principle from a body of knowledge is correct (in general) or useful in distinguishing induction from abduction (in fact, it seems to be counterproductive). This claim is found in both the Induction section, and the introduction. Both of these should IMHO be removed from the article.

The example now given for induction (inducing that a specific elephant is gray from a statistical claim on the population of all elephants) doesn't meet this characterisation, while the non-example you mention does.

The article you link is very helpful, particularly this excerpt:

"It suggests that the best way to distinguish between induction and abduction is this: both are ampliative, meaning that the conclusion goes beyond what is (logically) contained in the premises (which is why they are non-necessary inferences), but in abduction there is an implicit or explicit appeal to explanatory considerations, whereas in induction there is not; in induction, there is only an appeal to observed frequencies or statistics. (I emphasize “only,” because in abduction there may also be an appeal to frequencies or statistics, as the example about the elephants exhibits.)"

The second paragraph of the Induction section at least largely agrees with this.

But, note also that the Stanford article makes it clear that it's not universally agreed that inductive and abductive are mutually exclusive ("Harman (1965) conceives induction as a special type of abduction"). This is maybe worth a mention (particularly since the longer quote above does imply inductive logic is often incorporated into an abductive argument in any case).lukeuser (talk) 19:10, 22 September 2024 (UTC)