abduction

logic The process of inference to the best explanation.

"Abduction" is sometimes used to mean just the generation of

hypotheses to explain observations or conclusionsm, but the

former definition is more common both in philosophy and

computing.

The semantics and the implementation of abduction cannot be

reduced to those for deduction, as explanation cannot be

reduced to implication.

Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and

default reasoning.

Negation as failure in logic programming can both be given

an abductive interpretation and also can be used to implement

abduction. The abductive semantics of negation as failure

leads naturally to an argumentation-theoretic interpretation

of default reasoning in general.

[Better explanation? Example?]

["Abductive Inference", John R. Josephson

[email protected]].

(2000-12-07)