Abstract

“Selective abduction” is a notion coined by L. Magnani, who contrasts it with the more common notion of “creative abduction”. However, selective abduction may easily be confused with inference to the best explanation. This constitutes a problem, if IBE is reconstructed as an inductive inference. For on the one hand, abduction and induction must be distinct. On the other hand, Gabbay and Woods, but also Hintikka and Kapitan, even include hypothesis selection as part and parcel of the abductive inference per se. Consequently, there seems to be a riddle about what selective abduction clearly means and how it could be distinguished from other forms of reasoning. The contribution tries to solve this problem by explicating selective abduction and embedding it in an overall taxonomy of inferences.