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>> Reasoning encompasses two typical types: deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. I don't know about "typical" but every source that classifies reasonin
by YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> Reasoning encompasses two typical types: deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.
I don't know about "typical" but every source that classifies reasoning (or, more appropriately, logical inference) as deductive and inductive, also includes the abductive category. This categorisation scheme goes all the way back to Charles Sanders Peirce:
'[Abduction] is logical inference( ... ) having a perfectly definite logical form. ( ... ) Namely, the
hypothesis cannot be admitted, even as a hypothesis, unless it be supposed that it would account for the facts or some of them. The form of inference, therefore, is this:
The surprising fact, C, is observed;
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course,
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.' (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce, 1958)
(Quote copied from Abduction and Induction, Essays in their Relation and Integration, Peter Flach and Antonis Kakas eds. 200)
Consider a logical theory, formed of rules in the form of implications like A -> B (premise A implies conclusion B). Abduction is the inference of the premises after observation of the conclusions, i.e. if A -> B AND B is observed, then A may be inferred.
That's a different inference mode than both deduction: inferring a conclusion from a premise, e.g. if A -> B AND A, then B may be inferred; and induction: inferring a rule from an observation, e.g. inferring A -> B after observing A and B. Note that this is a simplification: induction assumes a background theory of more rules A1 -> A2, .... An -> A that can be applied to the observation A and B to infer A -> B.
Anyway, abduction is generally associated with probabilistic reasoning, albeit informally so. That probably means that we should categorise LLM inference as abductive, since it guesses the next token according to a model of probabilities of token sequences. But that's just a, er, guess.