Abduction, Clinical Reasoning, and Therapeutic Strategies

The debate on the role and possible uses of abduction in the health sciences has mainly concerned diagnosis. Indeed, whereas a range of works have addressed abductive reasoning in the elaboration of diagnoses, very limited attention has been devoted to whether and how abduction plays a relevant role also in the adoption and implementation of therapeutic strategies. This paper provides an attempt to start filling such a gap, considering, in particular, two aspects, that is, the selection and evaluation of evidence when addressing clinical decisions on single cases, and the choice of some therapeutic strategy rather than others. Some reflections will be put forward which try to set a dialogue between philosophical discourse on abductive reasoning and actual therapeutic situations in clinical practice where clinicians’ expertise is particularly relevant in conceiving hypotheses about which treatment should be adopted. A couple of actual cases will be presented to exemplify conditions in which abductive reasoning actually plays an important part in clinical contexts.