Reorienting the logic of abduction
pp. 137-150
in: Lorenzo Magnani, Tommaso Bertolotti (eds), Springer handbook of model-based science, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
Abduction, still a comparatively neglected kind of premiss-conclusion reasoning, gives rise to the questions I want to consider here. One is whether abduction's epistemic peculiarities can be accommodated happily in the mainline philosophical theories of knowledge. The other is whether abduction provides any reason to question the assumption that the goodness of drawing a conclusion from premisses depends on an underlying relation of logical consequence. My answer each time is no. I will spend most of my time on the first. Much of what I"ll say about the second is a promissory note.