More Than Storage of Information: What Working Memory Contributes to Visual Abductive Reasoning

Abductive reasoning is the process of finding the best explanation for a set of observations. As the number of possible observations and corresponding explanations may be very high, it is commonly accepted that working memory capacity is closely related to successful abductive reasoning. However, the precise relationship between abductive reasoning and working memory capacity remains largely opaque. In a reanalysis of two experiments (N = 59), we first investigated whether reasoning performance is associated with differences in working memory capacity. Second, using eye tracking, we explored the relationship between the facets of working memory and the process of visuospatial reasoning. We used working memory tests of both components (verbal-numerical/spatial) as well as an intelligence measure. Results showed a clear relationship between reasoning accuracy and spatial components as well as intelligence. Process measures suggested that working memory seems to be a limiting factor to reasoning and that looking-back to previously relevant areas is compensating for poor mental models rather than being a sign of a particularly elaborate one. Following, high working memory ability might lead to the use of strategies to optimize the content and complexity of the mental representation on which abductive reasoning is based

Concerning the Epistemology of Design : The Role of the Eco-Cognitive Model of Abduction in Pragmatism

Altres ajuts: the PRIN 2017 Research 20173YP4N3-MIUR, Ministry of University and Research, Rome, ItalyDesign has usually been linked to art and applied in scenarios related to everyday life. Even when design has, on occasion, made its way into the world of academia, it has always been closely linked to art and scenarios related everyday life. At last, however, the idea of design has reached the field of epistemology: an area within the very heart of philosophy that has always focused, in theory, on the foundations of knowledge. Consequently, design is being studied from different approaches interested in the foundation of knowledge, theoretical and practical. This is one of the reasons why abduction and pragmatism have been considered relevant from a design perspective. This paper first shows the main features of abduction and pragmatism, describes their evolution and considers their mutual implications. Second, the epistemology of design is analysed considering its most relevant characteristics. Third, the connection between abduction and, on the one hand, pragmatism and, on the other, design epistemology is addressed. Finally, the role of abductive inference in grounding a real epistemology for design theory from the naturalised cognitive perspective of abduction is outlined. The central proposition is that this approach is essential as a methodological innovation, as it allows us to analyse both the inquiry process and the design process as interdependent when dealing with practical problems of a social and cultural nature. This approach allows us to analyse how human actions determine changes in the theoretical framework from which we make our inquiry. In short, the world is an open-ended project that humans design through our daily inquiry

Què #®¥§≠@ és la creativitat?

La creativitat és el sant grial de les ciències cognitives i té especial importància per als investigadors de les ciències de la computació i la intel·ligència artificial. És obvi que la creativitat forma part essencial de la intel·ligència, tot i que la majoria d'estudis que intenten explicar-la o fins i tot replicar-la han fallit. En el present article proposem dues aproximacions innovadores: d'una banda, entendre els processos cognitius com a seguidors de regles o heurístiques, tot i que d'una manera flexible o fins i tot contradictòria o caòtica, però que ens mena en qualsevol dels casos a un context d'ús desacomplexat de multiheurístiques, que és el que hem denominat la «cognició mixta»; d'altra banda, proposem un mecanisme poc explorat de forma general en la literatura acadèmica cognitiva per tal de servir de punt de fulcre entre els models antics i una visió alternativa: l'abducció. Mitjançant aquestes dues estratègies, alhora que analitzant casos específics relacionats amb la capacitat creativa dels éssers humans, podem albirar un nou paradigma cognitiu més realista i sincer amb les capacitats humanes, fet que permetrà en un futur no gaire llunyà el disseny de sistemes de raonament artificials més potents i complexos.Creativity is The Holy Grail of the Cognitive Sciences and it is very important for researchers in the Computer Sciences and AI fields. Although all attempts to explain and replicate intelligence have so far failed, the quest remains a key part of their research. This paper takes two innovative approaches. First, we see cognitive processes as involving rule-following and as flexible, even chaotic, heuristics. This first concept uses a multi-heuristic concept without any complexes as mixed-cognition. Second, we propose abduction which, though seldom employed in this specific debate, is nonetheless a good way to explore creativity. Using both strategies, along with analysis of specific human creativity cases, we suggest a new cognitive paradigm that is both more realistic and truthful than hitherto. The idea is to offer a new way to achieve more powerful, complex artificial reasoning systems

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

explicación y abducción en la enseñanza de las ciencias naturales

Una comprensión adecuada de la explicación (y de la argumentación) científica escolar requiere introducir consistentemente en la enseñanza de las ciencias naturales aportaciones de distintas disciplinas metacientíficas (tales como la filosofía, la historia y la sociología de la ciencia). Una manera de trabajar en esta línea con gran tradición en la didáctica de las ciencias es el análisis epistemológico crítico de narraciones de casos de históricos. Los casos pueden ser herramientas eficaces para ejemplificar los contenidos de naturaleza de la ciencia que deberían impartirse en las clases. En este trabajo, narraciones de algunos "epítomes" (o ejemplos paradigmáticos) de descubrimiento científico se analizan epistemológicamente utilizando como marco conceptual la teorización sobre la inferencia abductiva. El propósito es ayudar al profesorado de ciencias a entender en contexto algunos aspectos metodológicos centrales de la indagación científica

Attending responding becoming : a living-learning inquiry in a naturally inclusional playspace

Traditional scientific paradigms emphasise writing in the third person, effectively marginalising the subjective perspective of the researcher. Many systems thinking, cybernetics and complexity approaches are better in this regard, as they involve systemic interventions where the relationships between the researcher and other participants really matter. Writing in the first person therefore becomes acceptable.In this Thesis (and a partner document coupled with it), I have explored how to reincorporate subjective empiricism into my systemic intervention practice. This has brought forth many unanticipated contributions. These take the form of new frameworks, concepts and approaches for systems and complexity practice, emerging from my engagements with myself and others, as well as from reflections upon those engagements.However, the content of my reflections and ‘becomings’ are not all that represent my doctoral contribution; there is also the form of my representation(s), as well as the emergent nature of the process through which they have come to be. I have drawn from Gregory Bateson’s use of metalogues: where the nature of a conversation mirrors its content – e.g. getting into a muddle whilst talking about muddles! Intuitively, I grasped the importance of metalogue in what I was attempting, and found myself coining the term metalogic coherence. Without fully appreciating what this might mean in practice, I groped my way into undertaking and documenting my research in ways that I believed would be metalogically coherent with the complexity-attuned principles to which I was committing. In sum, and key to appreciating what unfolds in the narrative, is recognising this Thesis and its partner document as metalogically coherent artefacts of naturally inclusional, complexity-attuned, evolutionary research.To fully acknowledge the different ways of knowing that have flowed into my inquiry, I have written in multiple voices (called statewaves, for reasons to be explained in the thesis). I found myself shifting from one voice to another as I explored and expressed different dimensions of what I was experiencing and discovering.In addition, I have made liberal use of hyperlinks, so both documents are far from linear. They are more akin to a mycorrhizal network, interlinking flows of ideas and sensemaking, all of which can be accessed and experienced differently, depending on each reader’s engagement with and through it.The thesis and its partner document are part of a composite submission that contains both poetry and artwork (visual depictions and animations of the ideas). These elements, along with the more conventional academic text, are augmented by penetrating reflections on my personal motivations, guided by a narrator signposting the streams as they flow into and between each other. All of my being has been implicated and impacted by this endeavour. When insights and new ‘becomings’ emerged flowfully during my practice, my joy was reflected in my narrative; as indeed were my pain, doubts and reinterpretations associated with ideas that were difficult to birth. I present all this in my submission, without retrospective sanitisation or simplification. In so doing, I am keeping faith with the principle that I remain at the heart of my research, and cannot be extracted from it without doing violence to the metalogical coherence that gives it meaning

A video-based analysis of science students’ computer-mediated abductive reasoning / by Joseph Paul Ferguson

 This research developed a framework of abductive reasoning based on detailed video-based analysis of the multimodal and distributed nature of science students’ interactions with agent-based digital simulations of the genetics of natural selection in relation to malaria and sickle cell anaemia

A video-based analysis of science students’ computer-mediated abductive reasoning

This research developed a framework of abductive reasoning based on detailed video-based analysis of the multimodal and distributed nature of science students&rsquo; interactions with agent-based digital simulations of the genetics of natural selection in relation to malaria and sickle cell anaemia.<br /

Naturalizing the logic of abduction

none1noI will analyse some properties of abduction that are essential from a logical standpoint. When dealing with the so-called 'inferential problem', I will opt for the more general concepts of input and output instead of those of premisses and conclusions, and show that in this framework two consequences can be derived that help clarify basic logical aspects of abductive reasoning: (i) it is more natural to accept the 'multimodal' and 'context-dependent' character of the inferences involved, (ii) inferences are not merely conceived of in the terms of the process leading to the 'generation of an output' or to the proof of it, as in the traditional and standard view of deductive proofs, but rather, from this perspective abductive inferences can be seen as related to logical processes in which input and output fail to hold each other in an expected relation, with the solution involving the modification of inputs, not that of outputs. I will also describe that if we wish to naturalize the logic of the abductive processes and its special consequence relation, we should refer to the following main aspects: 'optimization of situatedness', 'maximization of changeability' of both input and output, and high 'information-sensitiveness'.restrictedMagnani L.Magnani, L

Errors of Reasoning Exculpated Naturalizing the Logic of Abduction

A complete revision of mainstream logic is an urgent task to be achieved. This revision will be able to bring logic into a creative rapprochement with cognitive science. This can be achieved by trying to do for logic what over forty years ago Quine and others attempted for epistemology. It is necessary to propose a “naturalization” of the logic of human inference. This paper deals with an examination of how the naturalization process might go, together with some indication of what might be achieved by it. To assist the reader in understanding the naturalization of logic I will take advantage of my own research on the concept of abduction, which vindicates the positive cognitive value of the fallacy of the affirming the consequent thanks to the so-called EC-model (Eco-Cognitive model), and of the recent book Errors of Reasoning: Naturalizing the Logic of Inference by John Woods [84]. While this paper certainly aims at promoting the research program on the naturalization of logic, it also further advocates the placement of abduction in the research programs of logic, and stresses to what extent our contemporary philosophical and logical tradition is indebted towards Charles Sanders Peirce, a thinker often praised for his productivity but whose quality and importance are too often overlooked