ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what Charles Sanders Peirce means by the form of an abductive inference. Peirce's claim is that the process involved in can be represented to have the form of an abductive inference. Daniel J. McKaughan has argued that abduction is inference with respect to which hypotheses are pursuitworthy. Peirce's claim is that the process that results in a perceptual judgment may be represented to have the form of an abductive inference. Peirce sometimes seems to characterize abduction as the process whereby people come to suspect that some hypothesis is true and at other times characterizes it as the process whereby people generate hypotheses. Abductions generate hypotheses that, in at least the perceptual case, people conjecture to be true or accurate. For Peirce sometimes seems to characterize abduction as the process whereby people come to suspect that some hypothesis is true and at other times characterizes it as the process whereby people generate hypotheses.
