Abstract

This paper makes use of the concepts and theoretical framework developed within the field of Argumentation Theory to account for the structure and characteristics of abduction and of the comparative processes of weighing explanatory hypothesis. It elaborates an analysis of abduction based on its consideration as a meta-explanatory argumentation scheme while elucidating its relations with abductive reasoning and inference. The conceptualization of comparative processes of weighing explanatory hypothesis as complex and varied argumentative structures is presented as an alternative to the idea of providing a formally rigid and supposedly universal account of ‘inference to the best explanation’.