On the Mechanization of Abductive Logic

Abduction is a basic form of logical inference, which is said to engender the use of plans, perceptual models, intuitions, and analogical reasoning - all aspects of Intelligent behavior that have so far failed to find representation in existing formal deductive systems. This paper explores the abductive reasoning process and develops a model for it s mechanization, .which consists of an embedding of deductive logic in an iterative hypothesis and test procedure. An application of the method to the problem of medical diagnosis is discussed.In IJCAI-73: THIRD INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, 20-23 August 1973, Stanford University Stanford, California.