Abductive reasoning

Abduction, or abductive reasoning, is the process of reasoniong to the best explanations. In other words, it is the reasoning process that starts from a set of facts and derives their most likely explanations. The term abduction is sometimes used to mean just the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions, but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing.

Related Topics:
Explanation - Fact - Hypotheses - Philosophy - Computing

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Deduction and abduction differ in the direction in which a rule like “a entails b” is used for inference

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(see also logical reasoning for a comparison with induction):

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; deduction : allows deriving b as a consequence of a; in other words, deduction is the process of deriving the consequences of what is known;

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; abduction : allows deriving a as an explanation of b; abduction works in reverse to deduction, by allowing the precondition a of “a entails b” to be derived from the consequence b; in other words, abduction is the process of explaining what is known.

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Applications in artificial intelligence include fault diagnosis and belief revision.

Related Topics:
Artificial intelligence - Fault diagnosis - Belief revision

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