Definitions

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995

ABDUCTION. Abductive reasoning accepts a conclusion on the grounds that it explains the available evidence. The term was introduced by Charles Peirce to describe an inference pattern sometimes called ‘hypothesis’ or *’inference to the best explanation’. He used the example of arriving at a Turkish seaport and observing a man on horseback surrounded by horsemen holding a canopy over his head. He inferred that this was the governor of the province since he could think of no other figure who would be so greatly honoured. In his later work, Peirce used the word more widely: the logic of abduction examines all of the norms which guide us in formulating new hypotheses and deciding which of them to take seriously. It addresses a wide range of issues concerning the ‘logic of discovery’ and the economics of research.

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The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

Edited by Ted Honderich, 1995

ABANDONMENT. A rhetorical term used by existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre to describe the absence of any sources of ethical authority external to oneself. It suggests that one might have expected to find such an authority, either in religion or from an understanding of the natural world, and that the discovery that there is none leads one to feel ‘abandoned’. For existentialists such as Sartre, however, this sense of abandonment is only a prelude to the recognition that ethical values can be grounded from within a reflective understanding of the conditions under which individuals can attain *authenticity in their lives. Thus the conception of abandonment is essentially an existentialist dramatization of Kant’s rejection of heteronomous conceptions of value in favour of the autonomy of the good wil.

Find it here: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy