Logical abduction has played an important role in the cognitive sciences since its origins. Abduction is a type of ampliative reasoning that together with induction, complement deduction, and altogether constitute the inquiry cycle, according to Charles Peirce, the XIXth century philosopher who characterized abduction.

I will address two aspects of the role of logical abduction in the cognitive sciences. One of them concerns whether Peirces’ abduction may be considered as a logic of synthetic reasoning. I aim to show that creativity and logic do not exclude each other. In the second part, I shall put forward the thesis that the very question of artificial intelligence is the question of synthetic creativity. In this question abduction takes a main role in the development of artificial intelligence.

References

Aliseda, A. (2017) “The Logic of Abduction: An Introduction”, in L. Magnani and T. Bertolotti, T. (eds), Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science (section The Logic of hypothetical reasoning, abduction and models), edited by A. Aliseda. pp. 219-230. Springer, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-319-30526-4 Web page: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319305257

Aliseda, A. (2021) “The Place of Logic in Creative Reason”, in John R. Shook, Sami Paavola (eds.), Abduction in Cognition and Action: Logical Reasoning, Scientific Inquiry, and Social Practice, pp. 149-160. SPRINGER, Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics. 2021. ISBN 978-3-030-61772-1

Aliseda, A. (2025) From Intelligence to Creativity: The Quest for Automated Creative Cognition. In: Arfini, S. (eds) Scientific Cognition, Semiotics, and Computational Agents: Essays in Honor of Lorenzo Magnani - Volume 2. Synthese Library, vol 506. Springer, Cham. 2025 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-96688-0_1  From Intelligence to Creativity: The Quest for Automated Creative Cognition | SpringerLink

Douven, I. (2011). Abduction. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available via https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/ Accessed 1 April 2026.