Sometimes hypotheses are explained as a method of retroduction, sometimes called abduction, following Peirce.
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2, see pp. 107–9. he said that the conduct of abduction (or retroduction) is governed by considerations of economy, belonging in particular to the economics of research. He regarded economics as a normative science whose analytic portion might be part of logical methodeutic (that is, theory of inquiry).Peirce, Carnegie application, L75 (1902), Memoir 28: "On the Economics of Research", scroll down to Draft E. Eprint.
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In the 1870s, the originator of pragmatism, C S Peirce performed vast investigations that clarified the basis of deductive inference as a mathematical proof (as, independently, did Gottlob Frege). Peirce recognized induction but always insisted on a third type of inference that Peirce variously termed abduction or retroduction or hypothesis or presumption.Roberto Torretti, The Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 226, 228–29.
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As Kant had noted in 1787, the theory of deductive inference had not progressed since antiquity. In the 1870s, C S Peirce and Gottlob Frege, unbeknownst to one another, revolutionized deductive logic through vast efforts identifying it with mathematical proof. An American who originated pragmatism—or, since 1905, pragmaticism, distinguished from more recent appropriations of his original term—Peirce recognized induction, too, but continuously insisted on a third type of inference that Pierce variously termed abduction, or retroduction, or hypothesis, or presumption.Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), pp 226, 228–29.
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Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,For example: abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th century. It starts with an observation or set of observations and then seeks to find the simplest and most likely conclusion from the observations. This process, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not positively verify it. Abductive conclusions are thus qualified as having a remnant of uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in retreat terms such as "best available" or "most likely".
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"Deductive and Inductive Arguments," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The standards for evaluating non-deductive arguments may rest on different or additional criteria than truth—for example, the persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability claims" in transcendental arguments,Charles Taylor, "The Validity of Transcendental Arguments", Philosophical Arguments (Harvard, 1995), 20–33. "[Transcendental] arguments consist of a string of what one could call indispensability claims. They move from their starting points to their conclusions by showing that the condition stated in the conclusion is indispensable to the feature identified at the start… Thus we could spell out Kant's transcendental deduction in the first edition in three stages: experience must have an object, that is, be of something; for this it must be coherent; and to be coherent it must be shaped by the understanding through the categories." the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even the disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.
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