This chapter sketches a modularist account of the human capacity for abduction (or ‘inference to the best explanation’), which Fodor has argued must provide a decisive stumbling block to progress in cognitive science for the foreseeable future. It first isolates the main cognitive ingredients in scientific ability, which include a capacity for creative hypothesis formation and for flexible System 2 reasoning in addition to abduction. It argues that these are all displayed by contemporary (and presumably ancestral) hunter-gatherers in their tracking of prey animals while hunting, but that they are not displayed in human infants, contrary to what has been claimed by many developmental psychologists. The chapter suggests that abduction may piggy-back on capacities that evolved for the evaluation of linguistic testimony, and on preferences that evolved to govern efficiency and relevance in communication.
Keywords: abduction, Fodor, hunter-gatherers, relevance, System 2 reasoning, testimony, tracking