Compilability of Abduction

Deduction, induction, and abduction [Pei55] are the three basic reasoning mechanisms. Deduction allows drawing conclusions from known facts using some piece of knowledge, so that "battery is down" allows concluding "car will notstart"thanks totheknowledge oftherule"if thebatteryisdown, the car will not start". Induction derives rules from the facts: from the fact that the battery is down and that the car is not starting up, we may conclude the rule relating these two facts. Abduction is the inverse of deduction (to some extent [MF96]): from the fact that the car is not starting up, we conclude that the battery is down. Clearly, this is not the only possible explanation 2 of a car not starting up.