Abstract
The Reach of Abduction is the second volume in a planned three-volume set - A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems - spanning relevance, abduction, and fallacious reasoning. Despite this fact, Gabbay and Woods write in the preface that "we have written the individual volumes with a view to their being read either as stand-alone works or as linked and somewhat overlapping items in the series" (p. xvii). The aim of The Reach of Abduction is to embed abduction "within a practical logic of cognitive systems" and in so doing, provide "an adequate stand-alone characterization of abduction itself' (p. 9). At the same time, Gabbay and Woods admit this work is only meant to be "an enterprise of first words rather than last" (p. xviii). Indeed, this tentativeness gets expressed again and again throughout the book-here is but one example: "Much of what we will have to say for ourselves here and in the book's succeeding chapters will be fragmentary, tentative, programmatic and promissory" (p. 7).
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2005
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2005, Informal Logic. This article first appeared in Informal Logic: 25:3 (2005), 289-294.
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Recommended Citation
Goddu, G. C. Rev. of The Reach of Abduction: Insight and Trial by Dov M. Woods and John Gabbay. Informal Logic 25, no. 3 (2005): 289-94.