Mousa Mohammadian
For a long time, it was assumed that Peircean abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) were virtually the same. Recently, however, it has been claimed that they are radically different. I argue that these positions rely on a misinterpretation of abduction and lack a historical perspective vis-à-vis the relationship between abduction and IBE. To address these problems, I resolve a false exegetical dichotomy that has been dominating the interpretations of abduction. Then I show that abduction and IBE have important similarities and differences and the differences can be understood in terms of two historic developments in the philosophy of science, i.e., Reichenbach's context distinction and the problem of underdetermination.
