Abductive reasoning
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Deduction and induction are boring, like a clean math problem or the statistical normal distribution. Abductive reasoning is what you do in the real world.
- Deductive reasoning allows deriving b from a, only where b is a formal logical consequence of a.
- Inductive reasoning allows inferring b from a, where b does not follow necessarily from a. a might give us very good reason to accept b, but it does not ensure b.
- Abductive reasoning allows inferring a as the cause of b. As a result of this inference, abduction allows the precondition a to be abducted from the consequence b.
Abduction is formally equivalent to the fallacy of affirming the consequent (post hoc ergo propter hoc) because of multiple possible explanations for b.
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Created (3 years ago)