(I have only given this a little thought, so wouldn’t be surprised if it is totally wrong. I’m curious to hear what people think.)
I’ve known about deductive vs inductive reasoning for a long time, but only recently heard about abductive reasoning. It now occurs to me that what we call “Solomonoff induction” might better be called “Solomonoff abduction”. From SEP:
It suggests that the best way to distinguish between induction and abduction is this: both are ampliative, meaning that the conclusion goes beyond what is (logically) contained in the premises (which is why they are non-necessary inferences), but in abduction there is an implicit or explicit appeal to explanatory considerations, whereas in induction there is not; in induction, there is only an appeal to observed frequencies or statistics.
In Solomonoff induction, we explicitly refer to the “world programs” that provide explanations for the sequence of bits that we observe, so according to the above criterion it fits under abduction rather than induction.
(I have only given this a little thought, so wouldn’t be surprised if it is totally wrong. I’m curious to hear what people think.)
I’ve known about deductive vs inductive reasoning for a long time, but only recently heard about abductive reasoning. It now occurs to me that what we call “Solomonoff induction” might better be called “Solomonoff abduction”. From SEP:
In Solomonoff induction, we explicitly refer to the “world programs” that provide explanations for the sequence of bits that we observe, so according to the above criterion it fits under abduction rather than induction.