Application Of Abduction Research Articles

Generative mechanisms of workarounds, discontinuance and reframing: a study of negative disconfirmation with consumerised IT

AbstractThis study investigates the observed behavioural outcomes when users experience negative disconfirmation with consumerised IT artefacts with the aim to identify the generative mechanisms of these outcomes. We analyse blogposts, authored and published by tablet users, where they narrate their experience with an IT artefact. We employ grounded theory method techniques, and through the lens of Critical Realism and the application of abduction and retroduction, we identify three user accommodating practices following negative disconfirmation, namely discontinuance behaviour, workarounds and reframing, and two generative mechanisms with enduring properties and causal power over them: solution identification and cost/benefits assessment. Our work contributes to the literature of volitional IT use and the consumerisation of IT, by uncovering the mechanisms that pave the way towards observed user behaviours.

Alice’s Adventures, Abductive Reasoning and the Logic of Islamic Law

How does a Muslim jurist think the law and how, accordingly, he judges a fact? Using Alice in Wonderland as hermeneutical device to explore the logic of fiqh, this article identifies a divergence between Western and Islamic legal thinking in the application of abduction as key form of inference in the law of Islam. In particular, looking at the fact/law relation in symbolic terms, the article highlights how, while a dichotomy between fact and law characterizes Western legal thinking, fiqh upholds a connection between the “real” and the “right” (ḥaqq), where the effort (ijtihād) in understanding sharī‘ah postulates the actualization of the “rule” (ḥukm) in God’s creation. Thus, if sharī‘ahpre-scribes the Law, not only is the rule discovered through the sources (uṣūl), but the right has to be justified through a verdict de-scribing the fact, for the law to be validly stated for the given situation. In this sense, abduction as explanatory “hypothesis” (Peirce) and “inference to the best explanation” (Harman) of sharī‘ah provides an account for the probabilistic nature of fiqh, its ramification (furū‘) through verdicts, as well as for the epistemic and narrative function of the tradition as core aspects of the logic of Islamic law. At the same time, doubts can be raised about the compatibility between this logic and the deductive logic of modern state law, as a sub-product of Western legal thinking.

Semiótica do direito para o estudo dos precedentes judiciais

O estudo dos precedentes judiciais, antes prioritariamente aplicados em países filiados ao sistema jurídico da common law, vem ganhando corpo no Brasil; não apenas com aplicação de precedentes judiciais persuasivos, que possam servir de parâmetros aos julgadores de casos futuros baseados nos mesmos fatos de demandas anteriormente decididas, como dos precedentes vinculantes, com base na teoria do stare decisis, sendo um exemplo no direito brasileiro a súmula vinculante, misto de norma jurídica e decisão judicial, o que permite a designação de norma jurídica judicial. A aplicação da Semiótica ao estudo dos precedentes judiciais revela ser esta ciência um instrumento teórico adequado e eficaz, especialmente no viés da pragmática, mediante aplicação da abdução, método que se coaduna com a perspectiva in futuro dos precedentes judiciais, de modo a se falar no surgimento, no cenário nacional, da Semiótica do Direito, tendo por objeto de estudo o Direito e, particularmente, os precedentes judiciais.

Applications of abduction: testing very long qualitative simulations

We can test a theory of X by checking if that theory can reproduce known behavior of 'X. In the general case, this check for time-based simulations is only practical for short simulation runs. We show that, given certain reasonable language restrictions, the complexity of this check reduces to the granularity of the measurements. That is, provided a very long simulation run is only measured infrequently, this check is feasible.

Applications of abduction: hypothesis testing of neuroendocrinological qualitative compartmental models

It is difficult to assess hypothetical models in poorly measured domains such as neuroendocrinology. Without a large library of observations to constrain inference, the execution of such incomplete models implies making assumptions. Mutually exclusive assumptions must be kept in separate worlds. We define a general abductive multiple-worlds engine that assesses such models by (i) generating the worlds and (ii) tests if these worlds contain known behaviour. World generation is constrained via the use of relevant envisionment. We describe QCM, a modeling language for compartmental models that can be processed by this inference engine. This tool has been used to find faults in theories published in international refereed journals; i.e. QCM can detect faults which are invisible to other methods. The generality and computational limits of this approach are discussed. In short, this approach is applicable to any representation that can be compiled into an and-or graph, provided the graphs are not too big or too intricate (fanout<7).

Applications of abduction: knowledge-level modelling

A single inference procedure (abduction) can operationalise a wide variety of knowledge-level modelling problem solving methods; i.e. prediction, classification, explanation, tutoring, qualitative reasoning, planning, monitoring, set-covering diagnosis, consistency-based diagnosis, validation, and verification. This abductive approach offers a uniform view of different problem solving methods in the style proposed by Clancey and Breuker. Also, this adbuctive approach is easily extensible to validation; i.e. using this technique we can implement both inference tools and testing tools. Further, abduction can execute in vague and conflicting domains (which we believe occur very frequently). We therefore propose abduction as a framework for knowledge-level modelling.