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Discoverability in the Perspective of the EC-Model of Abduction

The Centrality of Eco-Cognitive Situatedness

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Handbook of Abductive Cognition

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Abstract

Fruitfully approaching the problems of discoverability involves an important intermediate step, which concerns the role of abductive cognition, that is, reasoning to hypotheses and the logical models of it. To this aim, when engaged in formalizing abductive reasoning, it is extremely useful to see inferences adopting the more general concepts of input and output instead of those of premisses and conclusions, which are standardly used to characterize abduction in the syllogistic scheme of the fallacy of “affirming the consequent.” Indeed, from this perspective, abductive inferences can be first of all seen as related to logical processes in which input and output fail to hold each other in an expected relation, with the solution involving the modification of inputs, not that of outputs. Unfortunately, if input and output fail to hold each other in a “good” relation, very difficult is to solve the related abductive problem: discoverability is jeopardized. In this perspective – and given the fact that science produces and “maximizes” cognition through a process in which affirming truths implies negating truths–the analysis of abductive processes leads us to the emphasis on the importance of the following main aspects: “optimization of eco-cognitive situatedness,” “maximization of changeability” of both input and output, and high “information-sensitiveness.” It will be also illustrated that irrelevance and implausibility are not always offensive to reason, and so they can favor both discoverability and discovery. A final section will be devoted to a clarification of the strict relationship between diagnosticability, “affordances” – as environmental anchors that allow us to better exploit external resources – and abduction. Especially diagnosticability, but of course also discoverability, is of course related to the availability of the appropriate affordances.

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Acknowledgements

Research for this chapter was supported by the PRIN 2017 Research 20173YP4N3—MIUR, Ministry of University and Research, Rome, Italy.

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  1. Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

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  1. Lorenzo Magnani
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Correspondence to Lorenzo Magnani .

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  1. Department of Humanities, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

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Magnani, L. (2023). Discoverability in the Perspective of the EC-Model of Abduction. In: Magnani, L. (eds) Handbook of Abductive Cognition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10135-9_1

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