abductive reasoning

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Being an aspie inferring is a confusing concept for me, bt have helped myself improve my ability by instead feeling like I had to be definite I would look for the best possible cause of something, but not leave out the possibilit their could be something better. It has helped answer question like what do you think, etc. I would I think it looks interesting or some response like that. An example would be instead of saying the grassi s wet because it rained one would say the most probable reason the grass is wet is that it rained.

here is more information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

Hmm... isn't abductive reasoning sort of related to Occam's razor? Both seem highly related to finding the best hypothesis with given data. I mean, really, all of our inductive reasoning must really, rightly be abductive reasoning due to the problems with induction.

I agree, induction theory is screwy, at least psychologically, sociologically and even by observation how can you completely know if something is correct or not.

Ockham's razor is parsimony. Technically speaking, abductive reasoning is logically fallacious.

This is why I dumped Logical Positivism for Karl Popper's Falsificationism. IIRC it was David Hume who showed that inductive reasoning cannot be logically justified. Induction is simply an intellectualized version of how mammalian brains make associations between experiences. You cannot prove assertions, only disprove them. Abduction can help with creating hypotheses but it cannot prove them, or even make it more "probable" that a theory is correct. According to Popper the best hypotheses are actually those that are "bold" and "daring" and thus improbable because such bold hypotheses, even if falsified, lead to experiments and observations that break new ground and thus give us new factual information.

People can treat abduction like a hypothesis and then use hard science or at least some proof to show that it is a fact. Somewhat like process of elimination.

Maybe for well defined problems that can be analyzed for long periods of time or specified in terms of formal logic. For poorly defined situations where information and time is limited (ie, much of life), abductive logic is what humans use to survive. Convergence of evidence techniques usually work for me.

Sure, even brain storming is logically fallacious (if used as as evidence). However, it has its place.

True, although brainstorming is more in the creative realm. I see abductive reasoning as more of a matrix of calculations to yield the prime probability, or most likely possibility. Abductive reasoning is a good way to generate hypotheses to test, or to investigate further.

Yes, but so is brainstorming. In fact, researchers will frequently do so.