Abductive Reasoning

CORE DEFINITION

Abductive reasoning (also called abduction, abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference that starts with an observation or set of observations and seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion or explanation. In other words, it is the process of reasoning from a set of facts to their best explanation. The term 'abduction' is sometimes used to mean the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions, but the former definition is more common in both philosophy and computing. The difference between deduction and abduction lies in the direction of the rule used in reasoning: 'a implies b' (where b is the result and a is the cause). Deduction allows deriving b as a consequence of a, i.e., deducing what is known; abduction allows deriving a as a possible explanation of b.