Abduction

It must be remembered that abduction, although it is very little hampered by logical rules, nevertheless is logical inference, asserting its conclusion only problematically...

The maxim of Pragmatism, if it is sound, or whatever ought to replace it, if it is not sound, is nothing else than the logic of abduction.

A mass of facts is before...

Argument is of three kinds: Deduction, Induction, and Abduction (usually called adopting a hypothesis). [—] An originary Argument, or ...

… the study of Abduction. Upon this subject, my doctrine has been immensely improved since my essay “A Theory of Probable Inference” was published in 1883. In what I there said about “Hypothetic...

Abduction is reasoning which professes to be such that in case there is any ascertainable truth concerning the matter in hand, the general method of this reasoning, though...

Methodeutic has a special interest in Abduction, or the inference which starts a scientific hypothesis. For it is not sufficient that a hypothesis should be a justifiable one. Any hypothesis which...

But in my paper on probable inference in the Johns Hopkins “Studies in Logic”, owing to the excessive weight I at that time placed on formalistic considerations, I fell into the error of attaching...

Reasoning is of three elementary kinds; but mixed reasonings are more common. These three kinds are induction, deduction, and presumption (for which the present writer...

Presumption, or, more precisely, abduction (which the present writer believes to have been what Aristotle’s twenty-fifth chapter of the second Prior Analytics...

Accepting the conclusion that an explanation is needed when facts contrary to what we should expect emerge, it follows that the explanation must be such a proposition as...

Abduction, on the other hand, is merely preparatory. It is the first step of scientific reasoning, as induction is the concluding step. Nothing has so much contributed to present chaotic or...

I now proceed to consider what principles should guide us in abduction, or the process of choosing a hypothesis. Underlying all such principles there is a fundamental and primary abduction, a...

… what does it matter how the work of abduction is performed? It matters much, for the reason that it originates every proposition. It is true that, however carelessly the abduction is performed,...

The first starting of a hypothesis and the entertaining of it, whether as a simple interrogation or with any degree of confidence, is an inferential step which I propose to...

Now, in an inquiry concerning a hypothesis in general, three distinct stages have to be recognized, these stages being governed by entirely different logical principles. ...

A singular salad is abduction, whose chief elements are its groundlessness, its ubiquity, and its trustworthiness. [—]

Abduction is that kind of operation...

Any novice in logic may well be surprised at my calling a guess an inference. It is equally easy to define inference so as to exclude or include abduction. But all the objects of logical study...

The three kinds of reasoning may be designated by the letters A, B, C.

A is that process in which the mind goes over all the facts the case, absorbs them, digests...

It may seem obvious that, before we can begin to verify a hypothesis, we must somehow “acquire” one. Yet, until Peirce began working on his theory of abduction, little thought had been given to...