mgr Bartosz Wielochowski
Freelance researcher
English abstract: The purpose of the article is to apply the concept of abductive reasoning in the description and evaluation of legal inferences about facts. The reflection is conducted in the field of philosophy of law and methodology of science. Based on a critical analysis of the literature I present both Charles Sanders Peirce’s inferential theory of abduction and Peter Lipton’s ‘inference to the best explanation’ (IBE) theory. In colloquial philosophical discourse those terms are sometimes used interchangeably. I argue that, although it is a significant simplification, IBE in principle fits into the broad meaning of abduction which I adopt in the present article. Using the work of Mariusz Urbański and Atocha Aliseda I apply IBE to the explanatory-deductive model of abduction. I utilize abduction understood in this way in the field of law. Based on the review of Polish philosophical and legal literature and the results obtained from the LEX database I show that the concept of abduction is unpopular in the legal doctrine. The main thesis is that abduction in the broad sense offers a significant value added in the description of non-deductive inferences and provides more precise criteria for assessing the quality of reasoning than concepts existing in Polish legal doctrine regarding non-deductive inferences. In the same time it exhibits essential features of those concepts. The analysis allows to examine and determine the relationship between the theories of abduction, IBE and the concepts found in Polish philosophical literature and legal doctrine. Its conclusions allow to introduce these new concepts into the philosophical and legal debate and – also – to describe and evaluate legal non-deductive inferences about facts in a more plausible way. The result gives hope for the methodological strengthening of both the process of making factual findings and the assessment of evidence.
Keywords: abduction, inference to the best explanation, IBE, legal abduction, abduction in fact finding.
Language: English
Published: nr 2(39) 2024, pp. 81-100.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2024.2.81
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