{"product_id":"the-art-of-abduction-isbn-9780262046701","title":"The Art of Abduction","description":"\u003cb\u003eA novel defense of abduction, one of the main forms of nondeductive reasoning.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith this book, Igor Douven offers the first comprehensive defense of abduction, a form of nondeductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning, which is guided by explanatory considerations, has been under normative pressure since the advent of Bayesian approaches to rationality. Douven argues that, although it deviates from Bayesian tenets, abduction is nonetheless rational. Drawing on scientific results, in particular those from reasoning research, and using computer simulations, Douven addresses the main critiques of abduction. He shows that versions of abduction can perform better than the currently popular Bayesian approaches—and can even do the sort of heavy lifting that philosophers have hoped it would do.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDouven examines abduction in detail, comparing it to other modes of inference, explaining its historical roots, discussing various definitions of abduction given in the philosophical literature, and addressing the problem of underdetermination. He looks at reasoning research that investigates how judgments of explanation quality affect people’s beliefs and especially their changes of belief. He considers the two main objections to abduction, the dynamic Dutch book argument, and the inaccuracy-minimization argument, and then gives abduction a positive grounding, using agent-based models to show the superiority of abduction in some contexts. Finally, he puts abduction to work in a well-known underdetermination argument, the argument for skepticism regarding the external world.\u003cbr\u003e List of Figures xii\u003cbr\u003eList of Tables xiii\u003cbr\u003ePreface xv\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments xix\u003cbr\u003e1 Introduction 1\u003cbr\u003e2 What Is Abduction? 29\u003cbr\u003e3 The Psychology of Abduction 69\u003cbr\u003e4 Facing the Challenges 103\u003cbr\u003e5 A Closer Look at Scoring 135\u003cbr\u003e6 The Ecological Rationality of Abduction 157\u003cbr\u003e7 The View from Social Epistemology 189\u003cbr\u003e8 An Abductive Response to the Skeptic 221\u003cbr\u003eEpilogue 253\u003cbr\u003eAppendices \u003cbr\u003eA Proof of Theorem 4.1 265\u003cbr\u003eB Proof of Theorem 5.1 269“An excellent snapshot of the state of play in formal approaches to the topic of abduction and is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of how the techniques of formal epistemology can be profitably used in the study of this sometimes maligned form of inference.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Valuable reading for epistemologists and philosophers of science regardless of their (antecedent) interest in abduction...essential reading for anyone interested in abduction—which, Douven argues compellingly, every philosopher and psychologist interested in theorizing should be.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“This book is a remarkable achievement combining formal rigor with experimental insight to justify and characterize human explanatory reasoning, or abduction, as Peirce called it. Such reasoning underpins much of everyday thinking as well as scientific inference and has become a key focus of much recent research into higher cognitive processes. I strongly recommend this authoritative and highly readable text to students and researchers alike.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMike Oaksford, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Science, Birkbeck College, University of London\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eIgor Douven\u003c\/b\u003e is CNRS Research Professor at the Sorbonne and the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Epistemology of Indicative Conditionals\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304657309925,"sku":"NP9780262046701","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262046701.jpg?v=1767738135","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-art-of-abduction-isbn-9780262046701","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}