How to Build New Hypotheses. Apagoghé and the Optimization of the Eco-Cognitive Situatedness

The process of building new hypotheses can be clarified by the ecocognitive model (EC-Model) of abduction I have recently introduced. I will take advantage of three examples: 1) a new interpretation of Aristotle’s seminal work on abduction, which stresses the need, to build creative and selective abductive hypotheses, of a situation of eco-cognitive openness, 2) a philosophical example of building new hypotheses, in the case of phenomenology, in which we can take advantage of an abductive interpretation of the concept of adumbration and anticipation, and 3) the abductive discovery in geometry, which illustrates in both a semiotic and distributed perspective, crucial aspects of what I have called manipulative abduction. The first example will also help us to introduce the concept of optimization of the eco-cognitive situatedness as one of the main characters of the abductive inferences to new hypotheses. Thanks to these examples we can gain a new vivid perspective on the “constitutive” eco-cognitive character of abductio