Abductive Reasoning: Challenges Ahead

The motivation behind the collection of papers presented in this THEORIA forum on Abductive reasoning is my book Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into the Processes of Discovery and Explanation. These contributions raise fundamental questions. One of them concerns the conjectural character of abduction. The choice of a logical framework for abduction is also discussed in detail, both its inferential aspect and search strategies. Abduction is also analyzed as inference to the best explanation, as well as a process of epistemic change, both of which chal-lenge the argument-like format of abduction. Finally, the psychological question of whether humans reason abduc-tively according to the models proposed is also addressed. I offer a brief summary of my book and then comment on and respond to several challenges that were posed to my work by the contributors to this issue

Computing Abduction in Semantic Tableaux

Abstract. The aim o/ this paper is to propose a way to extend the framework o/ semantic tableaux in order ta compute several /orma o/ abductive explanations: atomic, conjunctive and in disjunctive formo Our /ocus is on computing consistenf. explanations. 'fflat is, lormulas which satisfy the emailment and the consistency condition 01 the standard logical lormulation 01 abduction. Our stmtegy lor computing abductive explanations avoids the constroction 01 inconsistencies and it is done in a compositional lashion¡ abductive explanations with complez /orma are corutrocted fromsimpler ones. This allows us to identify special C41es, lor ezample that in which there are no consistent atomic explanations whatSDever

TOWARDS AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF NEUROPSYCHIATRIC CONSTRUCTS

The purpose of this article is to present an epistemological analysis of neuropsychiatric constructs. We characterize the concept of academic neuropsychiatry: a theoretical and research-based field of interdisciplinary work which is concerned with the full scope of psychopathological phenomena and its relationship with the neurosciences. Then, we define clinical neuropsychiatry as a practical field of medicine operating in the borderline of neurology and psychiatry to care for patients with neuropsychiatric conditions. To explain the logic of neuropsychiatric constructs, we define neurological constructs as well as psychiatric constructs, leading us to conceptualize and to distinguish between the neurological and the psychological, by means of a clarification of seven critical points of debate: structural lesions, physiologic abnormalities, causal agents, behavior, psychological functions, phenomenal experience, and clinical patterns. We discuss the traditional logic of brain-behavior relationships as well as the need for closer academic feedback between neuroscientific research and clinical practice. We argue that some neuropsychiatric cases are well explained by the current science of brain-behavior relationships, but many other cases located at the boundaries of this science require a transdisciplinary approach, including the study of sociocultural contexts and biographic timeline