On metatheoretic properties of logic-based abductive inference

Many researches in artificial intelligence have been devoted so far to logic-based abductive inference. However, as far as one knows, the problem of characterizing metatheoretic properties of abduction has not been addressed till now. The author contributes to filling this gap. Abductive inference is abstractly considered a relation between a theory, an observation, a preference criterion and a hypothesis. Metatheoretic properties of this relation are pointed out and discussed