Smart Inductive Generalizations are Abductions

Abstract

This paper describes abduction as `inference to the best explanation' and argues that"smart" inductive generalizations are a special case of abductions. Along the way itargues that some good explanations are not proofs and some proofs are not explanations,concluding that explanations are not deductive proofs in any particularly interestingsense. An attractive alternative is that explanations are assignments of causalresponsibility. Smart inductive generalizations can then be seen to be...