The purpose of this paper is to argue that abductive reasoning is part of a cognitive process of interpreting something as being something. The paper makes two fundamental claims. First, it proposes a definition of interpretation as a type of cognitive event. Second, it is argued that in some cases the activity of interpreting is a process of searching for plausible assumptions for the consistent formation of explanatory hypotheses. As a result of these two theses, it is concluded that the logic of interpretation can enrich and extend the study of so-called reproduction or generation of hypotheses. The treatment given here to abduction is contrasted and integrated into the history of studies on logical patterns of abduction and their applications.
Interpretation; Proposition; Abduction; Inferential competence; Cognitive bias; Defeasible inferences; Scott Soames