Abductive Reasoning

A car accident is a perfect scene for a form of reasoning that Charles Peirce termed abductive to go along side the Aristotle’s much older philosophy of arguments by deduction (syllogismos) and induction (epagoge). Peirce argued that many times the objective is to reason backwards towards the best explanation of the evidence. If we come to an accident but were not directly involved we might lack the story that lead to the crash. But that does not mean we cannot reason towards a likely cause. If we inspect an accident to find the car on the left has its front bumper pressed against the side door of the car on the right, we might add credence to the view that the car on the left is responsible for the accident. This is clearly not a deduction because it was not necessary that the premises would lead to the conclusion. Abduction is in general an extension of logical reasoning to a broader class of arguments.

Abduct to argue to the best explanation of the evidence.