Abduction and Hypothesis Withdrawal in Science Essay examples -- Scien

Abduction and Hypothesis Withdrawal in Science ABSTRACT: This paper introduces an epistemological model of scientific reasoning which can be described in terms of abduction, deduction and induction. The aim is to emphasize the significance of abduction in order to illustrate the problem-solving process and to propose a unified epistemological model of scientific discovery. The model first describes the different meanings of the word abduction (creative, selective, to the best explanation, visual) in order to clarify their significance for epistemology and artificial intelligence. In different theoretical changes in theoretical systems we witness different kinds of discovery processes operating. Discovery methods are "data-driven," "explanation-driven" (abductive), and "coherence-driven" (formed to overwhelm contradictions). Sometimes there is a mixture of such methods: for example, an hypothesis devoted to overcome a contradiction is found by abduction. Contradiction, far from damaging a system, help to indicate regions in which it can be changed and improved. I will also consider a kind of "weak" hypothesis that is hard to negate and the ways for making it easy. In these cases the subject can "rationally" decide to withdraw his or her hypotheses even in contexts where it is "impossible" to find "explicit" contradictions and anomalies. Here, the use of negation as failure (an interesting technique for negating hypotheses and accessing new ones suggested by artificial intelligence and cognitive scientists) is illuminating I. Abduction and Scientific Discovery Philosophers of science in the twentieth century have traditionally distinguished between the logic of discovery and the logic of justification. Most have conclude... ...s based on set covering model, International Journal on Man-Machine Studies, 19, pp. 443-460. C. Shelley, 1996, Visual abductive reasoning in archaeology, Philosophy of Science, 63(2), pp. 278-301. J. C. Shepherdson, 1984, Negation as failure: a comparison of Clark's completed data base and Reiter's closed world assumption, Journal of Logic Programming, 1(1), 1984, 51-79. ________, 1988, Negation in logic programming, in J. Minker (ed.), Foundations of Deductive Databases, Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, pp. 19-88. P. Thagard, 1988, Computational Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press. ________, 1992, Conceptual Revolutions, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. ________ and C. Shelley, 1994, Limitations of current formal models of abductive reasoning, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, forthcoming.