Creative Abduction Research Articles

Jeopardizing Biomedical Creative Abduction Through Impoverished Epistemic Niches

In this article the problem of discoverability and abductive creativity in scientific cognition will be characterized by the analysis of current difficulties that affect various aspects of the scientific enterprise such as in the case of the organization of Research and Development in biopharmaceutical companies. I will contend that this case symbolizes a paradigmatic example of what I have called “impoverished epistemic niches” in which it seems that some of the fundamental aspects that qualify modern science are jeopardized. To refer to some recent challenges to the crucial role played in scientific abductive cognition by the so-called “maximization of eco-cognitive openness” and “optimization of eco-cognitive situatedness”, I will propose the new concept of “epistemic irresponsibility”. I will emphasize the importance of the so-called knowledge in motion – in multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary scientific research: the concept of knowledge in motion is also the necessary conceptual premise of the analysis of various kinds of epistemic irresponsibility. I indeed will illustrate the current increasing expansion of commodification and commercialization of science, marketing of technoscientific products, impoverishment of the epistemic niches, showing that a consequence is and could further be an attack to the possibility of a further flourishing of human fecund and successful abductive creative cognition in science, and so at the same time human creativity severely compromised.

Generating mathematical knowledge in the classroom through proof, refutation, and abductive reasoning

Proving and refuting are fundamental aspects of mathematical practice that are intertwined in mathematical activity in which conjectures and proofs are often produced and improved through the back-and-forth transition between attempts to prove and disprove. One aspect underexplored in the education literature is the connection between this activity and the construction by students of knowledge, such as mathematical concepts and theorems, that is new to them. This issue is significant to seeking a better integration of mathematical practice and content, emphasised in curricula in several countries. In this paper, we address this issue by exploring how students generate mathematical knowledge through discovering and handling refutations. We first explicate a model depicting the generation of mathematical knowledge through heuristic refutation (revising conjectures/proofs through discovering and addressing counterexamples) and draw on a model representing different types of abductive reasoning. We employed both models, together with the literature on the teachers’ role in orchestrating whole-class discussion, to analyse a series of classroom lessons involving secondary school students (aged 14–15 years, Grade 9). Our analysis uncovers the process by which the students discovered a counterexample invalidating their proof and then worked via creative abduction where a certain theorem was produced to cope with the counterexample. The paper highlights the roles played by the teacher in supporting the students’ work and the importance of careful task design. One implication is better insight into the form of activity in which students learn mathematical content while engaging in mathematical practice.

Demands of the diagram: creative abduction in artists’ research and practice

ABSTRACT This is the introductory article by the guest editor of a special issue of Journal of Visual Art Practice, under the title of ‘Demands of the Diagram’. It addresses the work of the six contributing artists who explore different aspects of the ‘diagram’ at the intersection of history, philosophy, science, semiotics and art, in relation to their own and others’ creative practices. The article addresses emerging themes of embodiment, evolution and ethics arising out of the discussions, situating them with reference to C. S. Peirce and his theory of creative abduction. In conclusion, the author calls on the work of Isabelle Stengers to argue for the diagram as a commons, where heterogenous knowledges might co-create, helping to make us fit to respond to the demands of our time.

Abduction as a Method of Inductive Metaphysics

Abstract Like scientific theories, metaphysical theories can and should be justified by the inference of creative abduction (sec. 1–2). Two rationality conditions are proposed that distinguish scientific from speculative abductions: achievement of unification and independent testability (sec. 3). Particularly important in science is common cause abduction (sec. 4). The justification of metaphysical realism is structurally similar to scientific abductions: external objects are justified as common causes of perceptual experiences (sec. 6). While the reliability of common cause abduction is entailed by a principle of (Markov) causality (sec. 5), the latter principle has an abductive justification based on statistical phenomena (sec. 7).

수학 문제 만들기와 해결 과정에 나타난 가추 유형 분석

The purpose of this study was to analyze the abduction in mathematical problem-posing and problem- solving activities. Abduction is more concerned with creating new things than deduction and inductive reasoning. According to the student's rules, abduction are classified as selective and creative. Selective abduction is again classified into ‘manipulative selective abduction’ and ‘theoretical selective abduction’. Creative abduction is again classified into ‘little creative abduction’ at the level of mathematics in school and ‘big creative abduction’ at the level of academic mathematics. Four middle school sophomore students performed problem-posing activities on four tasks. As for the results of analysis on abduction types by problem-posing stages, all four abduction types were observed. But at the problem-solving stages, manipulative selective abduction and theoretical selective abduction were frequently used, while creative abduction was never used. Thus, for the education of mathematical creativity, deepening and expanding problem-posing is necessary that all the type of abduction has been expressed in the problem-posing activity.

Creative Abduction, Factor Analysis, and the Causes of Liberal Democracy

Abstract The ultimate focus of the current essay is on methods of "creative abduction" that have some guarantees as reliable guides to the truth, and those that do not. Emphasizing work by Richard Englehart using data from the World Values Survey, Gerhard Schurz has analyzed literature surrounding Samuel Huntington's well-known claims that civilization is divided into eight contending traditions, some of which resist "modernization" - democracy, civil rights, equality of rights of women and minorities, secularism. Schurz suggests an evolutionary model of modernization and identifies opposing social forces. In a later essay, citing Englehart's work as an example, Schurz identifies factor analysis as an example of "creative abduction". The theories of Englehart and his collaborators are reviewed again in the current essay. Published simulations and standard statistical desiderata for causal inference show the methods Englehart used, factor analysis in particular, are not guides to truth for the kind of data Schurz recognizes as common in political science. Recent work in statistics, philosophy and computer science that makes advances towards such methods is briefly reviewed

Modeling creative abduction Bayesian style

Schurz (Synthese 164:201–234, 2008) proposed a justification of creative abduction on the basis of the Reichenbachian principle of the common cause. In this paper we take up the idea of combining creative abduction with causal principles and model instances of successful creative abduction within a Bayes net framework. We identify necessary conditions for such inferences and investigate their unificatory power. We also sketch several interesting applications of modeling creative abduction Bayesian style. In particular, we discuss use-novel predictions, confirmation, and the problem of underdetermination in the context of abductive inferences.

수학적 모델링에서 가추적 사고의 역할과 의의

The importance of considering students' thinking processes in mathematical modeling teaching and learning has been emphasized. The need for an in-depth analysis of the role of abduction in mathematical modeling has recently been raised, though a detailed investigation has never been done. In this study, we theoretically examined the role and the working process of abductive reasoning in mathematical modeling activities. Based on our examination, we uncovered educational implications of abduction in mathematical modeling. For purposes of this paper, we defined abductive reasoning in mathematical modeling as “a thought that leads to proposing a possible effective explanation based on an understanding of the phenomenon, consequently to deriving a suitable mathematical model”. In addition, we analyzed the integrated process and characteristics of abductive reasoning, including overcoded abduction, undercoded abduction, creative abduction, and meta abduction used in the modeling process. This study uncovered major findings regarding the educational potential of abduction in modeling in several ways. First, the abductive reasoning process can improve students' accessibility to mathematical modeling tasks. Second, meta-abduction can support students' mathematization in modeling. Third, students' mathematical creativity can be expanded through the abductive reasoning process used in modeling. In conclusion, substantial higher-level learning is expected to be implemented at schools through mathematical modeling teaching and learning methods that reflect the abductive reasoning process.

Fear of knowledge: Clinical hypotheses in diagnostic and prognostic reasoning.

Patients are interested in receiving accurate diagnostic and prognostic information. Models and reasoning about diagnoses have been extensively investigated from a foundational perspective; however, for all its importance, prognosis has yet to receive a comparable degree of philosophical and methodological attention, and this may be due to the difficulties inherent in accurate prognostics. In the light of these considerations, we discuss a considerable body of critical thinking on the topic of prognostication and its strict relations with diagnostic reasoning, pointing out the distinction between nosographic and pathophysiological types of diagnosis and prognosis, underlying the importance of the explication and explanation processes. We then distinguish between various forms of hypothetical reasoning applied to reach diagnostic and prognostic judgments, comparing them with specific forms of abductive reasoning. The main thesis is that creative abduction regarding clinical hypotheses in diagnostic process is very unlikely to occur, whereas this seems to be often the case for prognostic judgments. The reasons behind this distinction are due to the different types of uncertainty involved in diagnostic and prognostic judgments.

Data fusion and abductive inference for metaphor resolution: a bridging discussion

AbstractSince the 1980s, metaphor has been recognized as a pervasively diffused phenomenon in communication, absolutely not restricted to rhetoric and linguistic phenomena, involving structured concepts, relations, and matching ‘rules’. Metaphor resolution, that is metaphor understanding, as well as metaphor creation, has become an issue in automated processing and understanding of natural language as well as of mixed visual communication. It can be showed as a process of structure finding and mapping procedure between conceptual denotation–connotation structures necessary for interpretation. Creative abduction is then showed to be the pattern inference required to work out structure-mappings in corresponding nodes as present in metaphors. In this paper, we review some key issues (definitions, typologies, theoretical problems) involving the concept of ‘metaphor’ and survey some definitions and concepts emerging in contemporary debate on abductive inference. Finally, we argue that metaphor understanding process can be recognized as a fusion tractable problem, allowing the exploitation of frameworks and algorithms of such domain.

What is the future for tool-specific generalized motor programs?

A key issue in cognitive sciences is to understand the cognitive bases of human tool use. Answers have been provided by two competing approaches. The manipulation-based approach assumes that humans can use tools because of the ability to store sensorimotor knowledge about how to manipulate tools. By contrast, for the reasoning-based approach, human tool use is based on the ability to reason about physical object properties. Recently, Caruana and Cuccio proposed a kind of reconciliation, based on the distinction between three types of abductive inference, involving a different contribution of motor and cognitive elements: Automatic abduction (motor + and cognitive-), abduction by selection (motor ± and cognitive±) and creative abduction (motor- and cognitive+). This perspective offers new interesting avenues. Nevertheless, it is also subject to several theoretical and epistemological limitations, which make it in its present form inappropriate for the study of the cognitive bases of human tool use. This article aims to discuss these limitations.

Theorizing in Grounded Theory and creative abduction

This article aims to contribute to the analysis of the logical arguments in Grounded Theory (GT), both in the version of Glaser (Basics of Grounded Theory analysis: emergence versus forcing, 1992) and of Strauss and Corbin (Basics of qualitative research, 1990). The article will focus both on stages of the coding process—that could be considered the core of the overall process of theorizing in GT—both on logic of GT, analysing in particular whether GT makes use of abductive thinking. The article outlines the distinction between different modes of abductive reasoning, and focuses specifically on one of them: the “creative abduction” (Eco and Sebeok, The sign of three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce, 1983). The distinction between different forms of abductive argument appears especially useful to explore the logic of GT. By introducing this distinction, the article discuss how theorizing in GT makes use—both in Glaser and in Strauss and Corbin—of the same type of abductive reasoning: the creative abduction. According to this analysis, the differences between the two versions of GT turn out to be much less severe.

A creative abduction approach to scientific and knowledge discovery

In this paper we explore the range of applicability of abductive reasoning for knowledge discovery. In particular, we discuss a novel form of abduction, called creative abduction, where new knowledge is generated in the process of explaining observed events, and demonstrate its relevance to knowledge discovery. The main contribution of this paper is twofold: First, we show that creative abduction can be used to infer a disposition explaining local temporal regularities. In the presence of multiple correlated regularities, this form abduction may significantly unify a given corpus of knowledge, corresponding to theory formation in scientific discovery. Second, we present a weaker form of creative abduction that infers a goal (e.g. interest) from simple 'condition-effect' rules called 'transitions'. If multiple transitions are correlated, the weaker form of creative abduction can be used to identify, e.g. clusters of Web users, as done in Web usage mining. We will focus on the formal underpinnings of this new form of abduction that seems readily applicable to a wide range of practical knowledge discovery problems.

Peirce's Semiotics, Subdoxastic Aboutness, and the Paradox of Inquiry

The author suggests that educational philosophy should benefit from addressing questions traditionally asked within discourse in the philosophy of mind, namely: the relation between the mind and world and the problems of intentionality (or aboutness), meaning, and representation. Peirce's semiotics and his category of creative abduction provide a novel conceptual framework for exploring these questions. A model of reasoning and learning, based on Peirce's triadic logic of relations, is analysed. This model, it is argued, is fruitful for overcoming the paradox of new knowledge that was first debated by Socrates in his dialogue with Meno.