English Dictionary: abduction | by the DICT Development Group |
3 results for abduction | |
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]: | |
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From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: | |
Abduction \Ab*duc"tion\, n. [L. abductio: cf. F. abduction.] 1. The act of abducing or abducting; a drawing apart; a carrying away. --Roget. 2. (Physiol.) The movement which separates a limb or other part from the axis, or middle line, of the body. 3. (Law) The wrongful, and usually the forcible, carrying off of a human being; as, the abduction of a child, the abduction of an heiress. 4. (Logic) A syllogism or form of argument in which the major is evident, but the minor is only probable. | |
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
abduction "Abduction" is sometimes used to mean just the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusionsm, but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing. The {semantics} and the implementation of abduction cannot be reduced to those for {deduction}, as explanation cannot be reduced to implication. Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and {default reasoning}. {Negation as failure} in {logic programming} can both be given an abductive interpretation and also can be used to implement abduction. The abductive semantics of negation as failure leads naturally to an {argumentation}-theoretic interpretation of default reasoning in general. [Better explanation? Example?] ["Abductive Inference", John R. Josephson (2000-12-07) |