INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ABDUCTION AND INVERSE RESOLUTION IN PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS

In systems devoted to diagnostic tasks, the term abduction usually denotes the process of explaining a set of observed manifestations, in the light of an existing domain theory. This amounts to find a set of hypotheses such that the manifestations logically follow from them and from the theory. Then, abduction corresponds to reasoning from consequences to possible premises. On the other hand, an analogous line of reasoning has been independently followed in constructive induction, where new predicates are introduced and theories are completed by trying to invert the resolution mechanism. In this paper, links are established between these two approaches by showing that the inverse resolution operators are sound abductive inference rules, in the case of propositional calculus. Some relationships with deduction in a closed world assumption are also investigated.