Generalization v. (Induction v. Abduction)

摘要

In this position paper, some differences between inductive reasoning and abduction are investigated. From an epistemological point of view, abductive reasoning is related to the non-deductive inference of explanations (which are often required to be basic facts) that, together with some background theory, allow a specific observation to be deduced or nonmonotonically inferred. In the Artificial Intelligence domain, an important family of inductive reasonings consists in inferring rules that generalize a series of examples. In this paper, the focus is on a distinction between induction and abduction that is traced back to the various possible natures of generalization. Afore precisely, it is shown that generalization from examples is sometimes performed just using deduction, although the resulting process is correctly interpreted as inductive reasoning. On the contrary, most authors would not classify corresponding forms of deductive explanation as abductive ones