Abductive inference and historiography: a conversation for historians and philosophers

Abstract

the article takes the form of a conversation between students in a philosophy seminar of history. The topic of the day is abduction, a form of inference first identified by Charles S. Peirce, that compared and contrasted the deduction and induction. After the teacher introduce the topic and a student summarize the own Peirce’ vision about the abductive inference, students take turns proposing abductive inference models and offering observations on the possible suitability of these models as descriptions or guides for an investigation or historical explanation. A student proposes that the difference of abduction, contrasting with the deduction and induction is just that abduction infers that the conclusion is possible rather than required (deduction) or probable (induction). Some students offer objections to this characterization and discussion then moves towards a number of other proposals to understand the very abduction, as well as the distinction between particularity and historical whole, the character of the historical explanation and evidence of the role in the evaluation of historical theses.