Arguing the OE, Episode 15: Thinking and the Soldier (on abductive reasoning)

I argue in this episode that the predominant form of reasoning that military professionals engage in is abductive reasoning. In inductive reasoning, scientists--principally concerned with theory formulation--attempt to discern general, stylized facts common to specific cases. These commonalities form the basis of a theory. In deductive reasoning, scientists--also principally concerned with theory testing/falsification--generate hypotheses from a theory and attempt to test its applicability to several cases. In both deduction and induction, the author's principal concern is the theory, not any specific case. We--as military professionals--do not share the scientist's concern for theory; we are more interested in the specific case, which we call our area of operations or the general problem we are trying to address. In abductive reasoning, we attempt to explain the dynamics in a specific case. The problem is that--all too often--we simply rely on intuition and common sense. The problem is that our areas of operation, which include innumerable lethal and political factors, include dynamics that are hidden, anomalous, and counterintuitive. Hence, proceeding from Charles Peirce, Ian Shapiro, and others, I argue that "mindful" abductive reasoning entails drawing from established scholarly theories (among other sources of perspective) to inform the process by which we come up with explanations of and interventions in complex cases. Sometimes the theories we draw from are complementary and help us fill out a rich description or picture of our area of operations. At other times the theories will be contradictory, and we'll need to think through whether one seems to better describe what we see on the ground. In all situations, the theories we draw from will help us establish connections and potential connections between stakeholders, organizations, and other factors, variables, and dynamics that we simply would not discern using our intuition or common sense alone.

[@epistemepraxis2256]

This is sooo good. Congrats Colonel! It's nice to see some deep epistemic expertise in the military

[@Celrador]

We all use induction and deduction all the time and what you explained as "abductive reasoning" also appears to me as induction.
All the time throughout our life and also in your profession during operations you create mental models formed by input of various kinds (theories, organized and unorganized information, etc.). Furthermore induction can also be fed into itself, leading to amplified reasoning. And then you can reason about the mental model you have created.
Induction basically just describes creating a mental model based on observation (and thus automatically generalizing to a degree - seeking for patterns like the center of gravity, CCs, CRs, CVs, and so on), which also includes observing what various scientific theories say and combining these to get a better picture of a situation. Deduction is then formulating a plan of actions to test this mental model. In your profession it would be akin to having set up your mental model via induction and then applying it, in the hopes that it holds true (unlike scientists who should always strive for falsification instead of verification).
Just think about it:
You go into an area of operations. You analyze the situation and organize the information as best as you can. You start classifying your means and so on. Thereby you create a mental model. A "theory". A way of actions you think will help you improve the "end state" in the desired direction. -> Induction
You then go ahead and apply this set of actions, this mental model, in the hopes you made the correct assumptions and analysis and it pans out in your favor. -> Deduction
You then use what you have learnt, together with what went wrong, together with the old input that led to the first model, to refine your model. -> Induction (fed into itself plus the new additional information)
You then go ahead and apply it again. -> Deduction
And so on...
It might be that it isn't as rigorously systemized and named as such as it is in the case of actual science, but you are constantly doing it as a human being and you even have, as I know from your other videos (which are all great, by the way), a formalized approach to induction and deduction.

[@guitarhurricane82]

Is there not a risk of achieving confirmation bias through abductive reasoning?

[@damir1234567890]

Abductive reasoning was up to a point but it lacks explanation on deriving a conclusion, and therefore incomplete. Why ?

[@Underrated_Clips]

The process of elimination is deductive reasoning, and we do it everyday. Gathering intelligence and using it to formulate a plan is inductive reasoning and we do it everyday. Calling this abductive reasoning seems to be making a distinction without a difference. I am not sure how this is helpful because it is nothing different than what we are already attempting to hone.