<logic> The generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions. Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and default reasoning.
Both the semantics and the implementation of abduction can be reduced to those for deduction. 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.
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(08 Nov 1994)