This book, the first of two volumes, provides novel perspectives on the study of abduction, by analyzing both Magnani's ample investigation of the subject and discussing its rising importance in today's epistemology and philosophy of science. Notwithstanding the long history of the concept, which has been studied since its analysis in Aristotle's Organon, in the last fifty years, it has known a resurgent interest in the epistemological literature since it is an ampliative inference deemed to be at the core of creative leaps and acts of discovery. For these reasons, different open questions still bother interested researchers: which constraints affect abductive reasoning when a hypothesis is evaluated or selected? Should we adopt a unified view on abduction or maintain a pluralistic perspective regarding its forms and functions? What kinds of models can be used in abductive reasoning? This last question, in particular, shows how the topics of the two parts of the volume are intrinsically connected and ensures they are of great importance to those interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, mathematical logic and AI.

Autorentext

Selene Arfini is a Research Fellow and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section, of the University of Pavia, where she is also a member of the Computational Philosophy Laboratory. Her work revolves around three main research questions: How do human agents cognitively cope with their ignorance? What kinds of adjustments to their epistemic perspective should they apply to discover something new? How do smart technology devices impact their cognitive possibilities? She recently published a book entitled Ignorant Cognition. A Philosophical Investigation of the Cognitive Features of Not-Knowing (2019) and co-edited different collections of articles and special issues on 4E cognition (2023 - Embodied, Extended, Ignorant Minds. New Studies on the Nature of Not-Knowing), chance-based reasoning (2022 - Enacting Chance: Ignorance Insight and Intuition), abduction (2023 - Abduction, Creative Cognition, and Discovery - Part of the Handbook of Abductive Cognition), and the definition of ignorance (2020 - Knowing the Unknown: Philosophical Perspectives on Ignorance). She has also published different articles in international journals of epistemology, philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of technology, and general philosophy of science.