A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems: The Reach of Abduction: Insight and Trial - Hardcover

Gabbay, Dov M.; Woods, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 044451791X ISBN 13: 9780444517913

Publisher: Elsevier Science, 2005

Synopsis

The present work is a continuation of the authors' acclaimed multi-volume A
Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems. After having investigated the notion of
relevance in their previous volume, Gabbay and Woods now turn to abduction. In
this highly original approach, abduction is construed as ignorance-preserving
inference, in which conjecture plays a pivotal role. Abduction is a response to a
cognitive target that cannot be hit on the basis of what the agent currently knows.
The abducer selects a hypothesis which were it true would enable the reasoner to attain his target. He concludes from this fact that the hypothesis may be conjectured. In allowing conjecture to stand in for the knowledge he fails to have, the abducer reveals himself to be a satisficer, since an abductive solution is not a solution from knowledge. Key to the authors' analysis is the requirement that a conjectured proposition is not just what a reasoner might allow himself to assume, but a proposition he must defeasibly release as a premiss for further inferences in the domain of enquiry in which the original abduction problem has arisen.

The coverage of the book is extensive, from the philosophy of science to
computer science and AI, from diagnostics to the law, from historical explanation to linguistic interpretation. One of the volume's strongest contributions is its exploration of the abductive character of criminal trials, with special attention given to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Underlying their analysis of abductive reasoning is the authors' conception of
practical agency. In this approach, practical agency is dominantly a matter of the
comparative modesty of an agent's cognitive agendas, together with comparatively scant resources available for their advancement. Seen in these ways, abduction has a significantly practical character, precisely because it is a form of inference that satisfices rather than maximizes its response to the agent's cognitive target.

The Reach of Abduction will be necessary reading for researchers, graduate
students and senior undergraduates in logic, computer science, AI, belief dynamics, argumentation theory, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, linguistics, forensic science, legal reasoning and related areas.

Key features:

- Reach of Abduction is fully integrated with a background logic of cognitive systems.

- The most extensive coverage compared to competitive works.

- Demonstrates not only that abduction is a form of ignorance preserving
inference but that it is a mode of inference that is wholly rational.

- Demonstrates the satisficing rather than maximizing character of
abduction.

- The development of formal models of abduction is considerably more extensive than one finds in existing literature. It is an especially impressive amalgam of sophisticated
conceptual analysis and extensive logical modelling.

· Reach of Abduction is fully integrated with a background logic of cognitive systems.

· The most extensive coverage compared to competitive works

· Demonstrates not only that abduction is a form of ignorance preserving
inference but that it is a mode of inference that is wholly rational.

· Demonstrates the satisficing rather than maximizing character of
abduction.

· The development of formal models of abduction is considerably more extensive than one finds in existing literature. It is an especially impressive amalgam of sophisticated
conceptual analysis and extensive logical modelling.

About this title

Book Description

The most extensive coverage compared to competitive works

From the Back Cover

Although A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems exhibits some common themes,
we have written the individual volumes with a view to their being read either as
stand-alone works or as linked and somewhat overlapping items in the series, depending
on the interests of particular readers. Relevance was our main theme in
volume one; abduction will occupy us in the present volume; and volume three will
concern itself with fallacious reasoning. Here too, we intend to honour the pledge
of independent readability. Even so, certain continuities will also be evident in all
volumes, of which the first and foremost is what we suggest about the structure of
practical reasoning. In some cases, it will be unavoidable that we repeat a point
made in a predecessor volume. Sometimes we will elaborate upon a prior point.
On occasion, we will correct what we now see as a mistake.

In writing our predecessor volume on relevance, we were mindful of two approaches
to the subject that had attained dominant purchase. One is the output
of a generation’s research on relevant logic, ensuing from the work of Alan Ross
Anderson and Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., beginning in the late 1950s. The other is the
theory of the communication theorists, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, whose
influential pragmatic account appeared in 1986. We did not want to write a derivative
book; neither were we much attracted by the prospects of polemical attack.
We desired to take an approach that at once recognized the significance of the
dominant views, while attempting to advance beyond them in substantial measure.

Abduction faces us with a somewhat different challenge. No less central a
factor in practical reasoning than relevance, we trust that we give no offence in
observing that the abductive landscape is not yet presided over by dominant theoretical
presences, in the manner of relevance. A possible exception to this are the
scattered contributions by the modern founder of abductive logic, Charles Peirce.
Peirce’s sallies are indeed seminal, and dotted with some brilliantly original insights.
But unlike the cumulative record of modern relevant logicians and the
detailed theoretical articulation of Sperber’s and Wilson’s account, Peirce left the
logic of abduction in a comparatively undeveloped state. It is true that there is by
now a large literature on abduction, created by an impressive number of authors
from philosophy, cognitive psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence
and, of course, logic. From philosophy alone it may be suggested that, contrary
to our present suggestion, an important approach has indeed presented itself in the
literature that has grown up around Gilbert Harman’s significant paper from 1965
on inference to the best explanation. There can be no doubt that inference to the
best explanation is an important idea which has been ably probed by a generally
sophisticated literature. Even so, we are not quite ready to accede to a dominance
that is more arguably to be found in the literature on relevance. There are three
reasons for this reluctance. One is that various kinds of abductive practice have
nothing to do with achieving explanations. Another is that even in those cases in
which abduction has an explanationist character, the factor of explanation is but a
part, albeit an important part, of the abductive pie. Thirdly, in some versions of it,
inference to the best explanation is not abductive, surprising as that may strike us
initially.
If we are correct in these observations, abduction is a more wide-open field
than relevance. For the would-be theorist this is an advantage and a disadvantage.
The advantage is that achieving a dominant position is, in principle, a target still
to be aimed at. The disadvantage is that there are fewer stout shoulders on which
the theorist might secure a purchase. Still, we don’t wish to leave the impression
that the abductive theorist’s is a voice in a solitary wilderness. There is much good
work that has already been published, of which three recent examples are [Aliseda,
forthcoming; Magnani, 2001a] and [Meheus et al., forthcoming].

The comparative openness of the logic of abduction makes a book such as this
in like degree an enterprise of first words rather than last. Even in what we think we
have already come to understand about abduction, there is ample discouragement
of the idea that all of abduction can be gobbled up in a single try. Accordingly,
the best we can hope for is new ground decisively broken in ways that portend
favourably for the grand theory, whenever it appears.

Edition details

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 044451791X
• ISBN 13: 9780444517913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496