THE ABDUCTIVE SYSTEMS GROUP

 

 

 
 

 
 

 
 



THE ABDUCTIVE SYSTEMS GROUP

  
Professor John Woods, FRSC
Director, The Abductive Systems Group

Department Philosophy
University of British Columbia

1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z1

www.JohnWoods.ca

The Abductive Systems Group (TASG) is an interdisciplinary cooperative of researchers who work on the complex structures of non-demonstrative and ampliative reasoning. Its initial focus was the logic of abductive inference, which continues to have a strong presence in the group. The focus has broadened and now encompasses the investigation of most kinds of non-truth preserving reasoning. TASG is more an interest group than a corporate entity. It has no board of directors, and would never dream of producing a mission statement or launching a manifesto. Subsets of us tend to see other subsets of us at some of the conferences we attend. We tend to read one another, and often there is critical and constructive follow-up correspondence. But there are no dutied of membership, and beyond the stimulation it stirs, no benefits either. And, needless to say, there are no membership dues either. My own role as director is largely honorific, beyond the fact that someone has to sweep the floor and turn out the lights. All the same, I have derived substantial intellectual nourishment from the many TASG interactions I've been pleased to have over the years.

Here is the link to TASG's present membership.

Gianluca Caterina and Rocco Gangle's Iconicity and Abduction appeared in Springer's SAPERE series in 2016. The Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science, edited by Lorenzo Magnani and Tommaso Bertolotti, was published in 2017. Lorenzo has a new book out also in the SAPERE series, The Abductive Structure of Scientific Creativity, An Essay on the Ecology of Cognition, Springer 2017. Woosuk Park's Abduction in Context: The Conjectural Dynamics of Scientific Reasoning, appeared in the same series, also in 2017. David Atkinson and Jeanne Peijenburg's Fading Foundations: Probability and the Regress Problem rounded out the year, appearing in Springer's Synthese Library. My Truth in Fiction: Rethinking its Logic is now in production with Springer, scheduled for the Synthese Library this year. Also coming in 2018 is the 2nd edition, revised and expanded, of my Is Legal Reasoning Irrational? An Introduction to the Epistemology of Law, now in production with College Publications of London, and an expanded new edition of Inconsistency Robustness, co-edited with Carl Hewitt, also from College Publications

Conferences of likely interest include:

JUNE 2018:

  • The Congress of Universal Logic (UNILOG 2018) in Vichy.
OCTOBER 2018:
  • A Conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR2018) in Seville.

Best wishes for an alethically abundant New Year,
John




Copyright © John Woods. All rights reserved.