Abduction: Can Non-human Animals Make Discoveries?

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between information and abductive reasoning in the context of problem-solving, focusing on non-human animals. Two questions guide our investigation: (1) What is the relation between information and abductive reasoning in the context of human and non-human animals? (2) Do non-human animals perform discovery based on inferential processes such as abductive reasoning? In order to answer these questions, we discuss the semiotic concept of information in relation to the concept of abductive reasoning and, more specifically, to the notion of manipulative abduction proposed by Magnani (2009). Finally, we investigate a case study of corvids’ intelligence, namely, their capacity of causal cognition.