Agnessa Inshakova (Volgograd State University; Volgograd State University) & Alexander Goncharov (Volgograd State University) have posted Abduction for Juridical Science and Practice on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The authors study the characteristic features that distinguish abduction from other methods of scientific research by comparing a number of methods: deductive, inductive, hypothetical-deductive, comparison with analogy. Abduction has emerged as a special way of searching for explanatory hypotheses because of the lack of a view of the need to limit the tasks of methodology, and also because of the view that the philosophy of science and logic must necessarily engage in the conceptual analysis of the emergence of new ideas and hypotheses in science. Abduction has such a way of reasoning that it corresponds to the scheme of real scientific research, starting the way with the establishment of some observable properties of phenomena, the scientist in conclusion tries to establish basic explanatory ideas.
Critics of the model of abductive reasoning made attempts to structure abduction to hypothetical reasoning, moreover, to the ordinary modified deductive scheme, that is, from the effect to the ground, and from action to inference. It does not reflect the specifics of the abductive course of reasoning from facts to an explanatory hypothesis. This specificity of abductive reasoning is difficult to structure, which becomes clear when referring to their epistemological analysis. According to the authors, abduction is one of the most important methods of studying any scientific category, a cognitive procedure, a method of scientific research that belongs to a class of plausible reasoning of a non-deductive nature, possessing a quasi-structure rather than a full-fledged stable structure.
