Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

  International Meeting
  Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery


   University of Lisbon
   Museu de Ciência da Universidade de Lisboa
  4 - 6 May 2006

  Coordination: Alexander Gerner and Olga Pombo
 
  Scientific Board: Alexander Gerner, Ana Paula Silva,
  João Sampaio, Olga Pombo, Ricardo Lopes

   Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL)

                                                       
                                                        Com o apoio de

                                                     


 

Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery

[Colloquium Subject]  [Topics]  [Program]  [Speakers]  [Photos]  [Call for papers]  [Inscription]  [Cartaz]

 

Colloquium Subject

“Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis.
It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea”
(Peirce 1903CP 5.171)


The great American philosopher Charles S. Peirce argued that, besides deduction and induction, there is a third substantially different mode of inference which he called "abduction" or "retroduction". Peirce described this reasoning mode as "the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis". Further, abduction was developed as a strategy of justification: "Inference to the best explanation"(IBE)(Harman 1965 Lipton 1991). Moreover abduction as reasoning under uncertainty can be seen as a necessity (Niiniluoto) in everyday life, in detective stories and in providing a non-classical logic of (scientific) discovery. It also appears that experiments and manipulative abduction, that is, "thinking through doing and not only in a pragmatic sense about doing" (Magnani 2001) is endowed with a great explanatory and heuristic power. Abduction is thus a form of ampliative, creative inference, with a vast applicability in Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind, Logics, Cognitive Science and is thus substantially linked to Semiotics, Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory, and Medical Diagnosis among others.

This meeting general endeavor is to pave the way for a desirable methodology of heuristics completing the classical inductive-deductive scheme of scientific explanation. Clarifying the up-to-date terminologies and the different concepts of abduction - starting with Peirce - and discussing the derived abductive methodologies and epistemic strategies in discovery, today as well as in a historical perspective (e.g. J. Kepler), will be the aim of this international meeting on "Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery".


Topics
Topic 1: Peirce and the Concept of Abduction. “Problems with” and “terminologies of” abduction:
Examples: abduction and logics (deduction, induction, abduction) weak vs. strong abduction creative abduction and discovery selective abduction abduction and justification (IBE) perception and abduction (visual etc.) abduction and action (manipulative abduction) abduction and interpretation migration of the concept of abduction the shared concept of abduction in Cognitive Science, AI, Philosophy of Science, Semiotics, etc.

Topic 2: Case studies on Abduction (historical and epistemological)
Examples: Kepler example Kepler / Maxwell and hypothesis formation, etc.

Topic 3: Processes of Scientific Discovery
Examples: interrogative model of scientific inquiry abduction and the dialogic of just being different formal approach to scientific problem solving innovative knowledge communities etc.

Topic 4: Abductive Strategies, Applications & Perspectives
Examples: abduction and cognition epistemic mediators in scientific discovery model-based reasoning and abduction abduction in medical reasoning and discovery abduction and knowledge building in communities of network expertise abductive reasoning, surprise and self-organization in Robotics abduction, image and attention strategies in reasoning and creation processes abduction and Biosemiotics ars interviendi and heuristics theory enlargement strategies etc.

 

Program

Thursday 04.05.2006
 

8:30


Reception
 

9:30 - 9:45


Olga Pombo and Nuno Guimarães

Introduction to the International Meeting
 

Chairperson: Olga Pombo


Topic 1: Peirce and the Concept of Abduction
 

9:45 - 10:30


Shahid Rahman (Université Lille 3, France)

Abduction, Belief-Revision and Non-Normality
 

10:30 - 11.00


Nuno Nabais (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Abduction and Categories
 

11.00 - 11:30


Coffee break
 

11:30 - 12:00


Alexander Gerner (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Epistemic Attention and Abduction

 

Pasi Pohjola (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

What is Abductive Method?
 

12:00 - 12:30

12:30 - 14:30


Lunch
 


Topic 2: Case studies on Abduction (historical and epistemological)

 

14:30 - 15:00

Andrés Rivadulla (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain)

Abductive Reasoning, Theoretical Models and the Physical Way of Dealing Fallibly with Nature

 

João Luís Cordovil (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Are the Two Major Conceptual Moments of the (Orthodox) Quantum Mechanics Moments of Abduction?

 

Albrecht Heeffer (Ghent University, Belgium)

Abduction as a Strategy for Concept Formation in Mathematics: Cardano Postulating a Negative

 

Coffee break 

 

Albert Schirrmeister (Humboldt Universität Berlin, Germany)

Johannes Kepler’s Dreams and Abductive Knowledge

 

Ana Paula Silva (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

How can the Example of Kepler’s Great Scientific Discovery Illuminate the Problematical Nature of Abduction?
 

15:00 - 15:30

15:30 - 16:00

16:00 - 16:30

16:30 - 17:00

17:00 - 17:30
 

17:30 - 18:00

 


General Discussion
 


Friday 05.05.2006
 

9:30 - 9:45

Chairperson: Nuno Nabais


Topic 3: Processes of Scientific Discovery
 

9:45 - 10:30

Luís Moniz Pereira (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)

Preferential Theory Revision – A Logic Program Approach

Joke Meheus (Ghent University, Belgium)

Adaptive Logics for Abduction and the Explication of Explanation-Seeking Processes


Coffee break 

 

Diderik Batens (Ghent University, Belgium)

Formal Problem Solving Processes
 

Sami Paavola (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Abduction with Distributed Means

 Lunch
 

10:30 - 11:00

11:00 - 11:30

11:30 - 12:00

12:00 - 12:30

12:30 - 14:30


Topic 4: Abductive Strategies, Applications & Perspectives
 
 

14:30 - 15:15
 

Michael Hoffmann (Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.A.)

Seeing Problems, Seeing Solutions. 
Abduction and Diagrammatic Reasoning in a Theory of Learning and Creativity
 

José Augusto Mourão (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)

Abduction and Metaphor
 

Coffee break

 

 

Elia Belli (University of Pavia, Italy)

Agent-Based Abduction, being Rational through Fallacies
 

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Abductive issues in the Proof of Pragmaticism
 

General Discussion

 

15:15 - 15:45
 

 
 

15:45 - 16:15

 
 

16:15 - 16:45

 
 

16:45 - 17:30

 
 

17:30 - 18:00

 


Saturday 06.05.2006
 

9:30 - 9:45

Chairperson: Alexander Gerner


Topic 4: Abductive Strategies, Applications & Perspectives
 

9:45 - 10:15

João Sampaio (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Clinical Reason in Medicine: The role of Abductive Inference

  

Willem F. G. Haselager (University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)

Abduction's Dark Ways

 

Coffee break 

 

Dina Mendonça and Isabel Serra (Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

Abduction and Emotional Processes - a Taxonomy of Emotional Processes in Scientific Discovery

 Lorenzo Magnani (University of Pavia, Italy)

Multimodal Abduction. Neuronal Process, External Semiotic Anchors, Hybrid Representations

 Olga Pombo and Alexander Gerner

Closing Panel
 

10:15 - 10:45

10:45 - 11:15

11:15 - 11.45

11:45 - 12:30

12.30 - 13.00

 

Confirmed Speakers

Diderik Batens (Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Belgium)
Elia Belli (Department of Philosophy & Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy)
 João Luís Cordovil (Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Alexander Gerner (Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Willem F. G. Haselager (Nijmegen Institut for Cognition and Information, University Nijmegen, Netherlands)
Albrecht Heeffer (Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Belgium)
 Michael Hoffmann (Georgia Institut of Technology, EUA)
Renato R. Kinouchi (Universidade de S. Paulo, Brasil)
Lorenzo Magnani (Department of Philosophy & Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy)
Joke Meheus (Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Belgium)
 Dina Mendonça (Institulo de Filosofia da linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Luís Moniz Pereira (Centre for Artificial Intelligence /CENTRIA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
José Augusto Mourão (DCC, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Nuno Nabais (CFCUL / Department of Philosophy, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
 Sami Paavola (Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building, University od Helsinki, Finland)
Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (University of Helsinki & Turku, Finland)
Pasi Pohjola (Department of Social Science and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Shahid Rahman (Department of Philosophy, Université Lille, France)
Andrés Rivadulla (Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Universidad Complutense, Spain)
 João Sampaio (Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Albert Schirrmeister (Humboldt Universität, Berlin)
 Isabel Serra (CICTSUL / Department of Mathematics, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Ana Paula Silva (Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
 

Photos

 

 

Call for papers

Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon

International Meeting
Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery

Papers addressing topics related to Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery are now being invited for the International Meeting on Abduction and the Process of Scientific Discovery to be held at the University of Lisbon, Museu de Ciência, May 4th-6th, 2006. Clarifying the up-to-date terminologies and the different concepts of abduction - starting with Peirce - and discussing the derived abductive methodologies, epistemic strategies and applications in discovery today as well as in a historical perspective, will be the aim of this international meeting.

Submissions should consist of an abstract of about 600 words and should be accompanied by an abbreviated C.V. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1st of March 2006. The decision about the acceptance of additional papers will be communicated until 15th March. Please send your abstracts and C.V. electronically in Microsoft Word format to cfcul@fc.ul.pt

Final papers should be in english and not exceed 3000 words. A selection of the papers will be published in a special issue of Cadernos de Filosofia das Ciências published by the Center of Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL).  



Inscription

Please remember to incribe, by email, before 1st of May, because organizational purpose.
The payment will be effectuated right before the start of the conference.

Inscription fee: 50€ ( Students: 25€ )

Organization

Center of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL)
Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa
Campo Grande, Edifício C1, 3 Piso, Sala 1.3.35
1749-016 Lisboa
http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt
cfcul@fc.ul.pt
 

Location

Museu de Ciência da Universidade de Lisboa
Rua da Escola Politécnica 56,
1250-102 Lisboa
Tel. (+351) 21 392 1808
Fax (+351) 21 390 9326
Secretariate

Elisabete Fonseca
Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa
 Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa
Campo Grande, Edifício C1, 3º Piso, Sala 1.3.35
1749-016 LISBOA
Telf: 217500000, ext.21335
Fax: 217500346

 

Recommended hotel

Hotel Borges
In the very center of the city, nearby the subway and the Café where Fernando Pessoa used to go.

If you want us to reserve your accomodation, please let us know your arrival and departure timetable