What is Abductive Reasoning?

@tamago (30)
Canada
October 14, 2011 11:20am CST
What is abductive reasoning? Can you give me some examples?
1 response
peavey
@peavey (16936)
• United States
14 Oct 11
Abductive reasoning is basically probability reasoning. For instance, if there are clouds in the sky and it's the rainy season, then based simply on those two facts, it will probably rain. The Butte College site explains it this way: "Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set."
tamago
@tamago (30)
• Canada
14 Oct 11
Thanks for the explanation. But what is the difference between abductive reasoning and inductive reasoning?
peavey
@peavey (16936)
• United States
14 Oct 11
Maybe this will help: http://butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/thinking/reasoning.html You can skip through the math and convoluted logic to see the specific definitions.