Abduction as a Mode of Inference in Science Education

The central argument of this article is that abduction as a “mode of inference” is a key element in the nature of scientists’ science and should consequently be introduced in school science. Abduction generally understood as generation and selection of hypotheses permits to articulate the classical scientific contexts of discovery and justification and provides educational insights into scientific methodology, this being a particularly important issue in science teaching. However, abductive reasoning has been marginally treated in the philosophy of science until relatively recently; accordingly, we deem it important to perform an “archaeology” of the concept that considers C. S. Peirce’s seminal contributions. We also choose to review contemporary treatments in order to recognise useful classifications to support more meaningful ways of teaching science and the nature of science. An elucidation of the participation of abductive inferences in knowledge construction seems necessary for us to derive conceptual input for the understanding and design of explanations in school science. Some prospective examples of “school scientific abduction” are discussed in the article through the lens of the results of our theoretical analysis.Fil: Aduriz Bravo, Agustin. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Centro de Formación e Investigación en Enseñanza de las Ciencias; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sans Pinillos, Alger. Universita degli Studi di Pavia; Itali

Show Me the Argument: Empirically Testing the Armchair Philosophy Picture

Many philosophers subscribe to the view that philosophy is a priori and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair. This paper sets out to empirically test this picture. If this were the case, we would expect to see this reflected in philosophical practice. In particular, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, rather than inductive, arguments. The paper shows that the percentage of philosophy articles advancing deductive arguments is higher than those advancing inductive arguments, which is what we would expect from the vantage point of the armchair philosophy picture. The results also show, however, that the percentages of articles advancing deductive arguments and those advancing inductive arguments are converging over time and that the difference between inductive and deductive ratios is declining over time. This trend suggests that deductive arguments are gradually losing their status as the dominant form of argumentation in philosophy

Belnap's epistemic states and negation-as-failure

Generalizing Belnap's system of epistemic states [Bel77] we obtain the system of disjunctive factbases which is the paradigm for all other kinds of disjunctive knowledge bases. Disjunctive factbases capture the nonmonotonic reasoning based on paraminimal models. In the schema of a disjunctive factbase, certain predicates of the resp. domain are declared to be exact, i.e. two-valued, and in turn some of these exact predicates are declared to be subject to the Closed-World Assumption (CWA). Thus, we distinguish between three kinds of predicates: inexact predicates, exact predicates subject to the CWA, and exact predicates not subject to the CWA

Hume’s problem, epistemic deductivism and the validation of induction

Contrary to Owen (2000), Hume's problem is, as has traditionally been supposed, a problem for the justification of inductive inference. But, contrary to tradition, induction on Hume's account is not deductively invalid. Furthermore, on a more modem conception of inductive or ampliative inference, it is a mistake to suppose that the proper construal of an argument explicating the supposed justification for such inferences should in general be non-deductive. On a general requirement for argument cogency that arguments should be suitably constructed so as to make it clear to the audience that the subject is justified, on whatever basis is cited, in regarding the hypothesis with whatever epistemic attitude the arguer purports to be so justified, arguments in general, fully explicated and properly construed, should be deductively valid. Hume’s problem does not prevent such justification because his crucial argument establishes only that our basic assumptions cannot be justified, in the sense of being 'proven', or shown by non-question-begging argument to be just. It does not establish that our basic assumptions, properly explicated, are not just, or that they are not (at least to the satisfaction of most of us) clearly so. Nor does Goodman's 'new riddle' of induction pose a serious problem for the justification of our inductive inferences, as is still commonly suggested, since Jackson figured out the solution to the riddle thirty years ago. There is an analogous problem to Hume’s for the provability of principles or claims of deductive inferability, and if my analysis of the proper construal structure of argument (in the natural sense) is correct, this will block Howson's (2000) proposed escape route. Nevertheless, as with the case of induction, the unprovability of basic claims and principles of deductive inferability does not bar their deployment in cogent justifications

Towards a Model of Argument Strength for Bipolar Argumentation Graphs

UID/FIL/00183/2013Bipolar argument graphs represent the structure of complex pro and contra arguments for one or more standpoints. In this article, ampliative and exclusionary principles of evaluating argument strength in bipolar acyclic argumentation graphs are laid out and compared to each other. Argument chains, linked arguments, link attackers and supporters, and convergent arguments are discussed. The strength of conductive arguments is also addressed but it is argued that more work on this type of argument is needed to properly distinguish argument strength from more general value-based components of such argu- ments. The overall conclusion of the article is that there is no justifiably unique solution to the problem of argument strength outside of a particular epistemological framework.publishersversionpublishe

Does the Dome Defeat the Material Theory of Induction?

According to John D. Norton's Material Theory of Induction, all inductive inferences are justified by local facts, rather than their formal features or some grand principles of nature's uniformity. Recently, Richard Dawid (2015) has offered a challenge to this theory: in an adaptation of Norton's own celebrated "Dome" thought experiment, it seems that there are certain inductions that are intuitively reasonable, but which do not have any local facts that could serve to justify them in accordance with Norton's requirements. Dawid's suggestion is that “raw induction” might have a limited but important role for such inferences. I argue that the Material Theory can accommodate such inductions, because there are local facts concerning the combinatoric features of the induction’s target populations that can licence the inferences in an analogous way to existing examples of material induction. Since my arguments are largely independent of the details of the Dome, Norton's theory emerges as surprisingly robust against criticisms of excessive narrowness