[Identification and description of a new epistemological category of inferential reasoning related to meta-naturalistic science].
Modern science underwent a substantial shift of methodology passing from naturalistic science to meta-naturalistic science, the latter addressed to introduce "Technologically Modified Beings or Objects" (TMB - TMO) in nature, with the intention to utilize them for some endpoints. Classically, naturalistic science draws epistemological inferences using the traditional criteria of induction, deduction or abduction. The question arises: "What is the epistemological criterion of inference used by meta-naturalistic science?". Meditating on this question, I have identified the new epistemological category of reasoning that characterizes the meta-naturalistic science, calling it: "Adduction". Adduction can be defined as "A new epistemological category of inferential reasoning, beside induction, deduction, abduction, currently used in meta-naturalistic science, that consists in deriving inferences to what it has not been yet scientifically experimented, demonstrated and validated, simply by adducing, as a support to the inference, the motivation itself for which the scientists were exerted to produce their meta-naturalistic artifacts. In so doing, the inference is no other than an aprioristic, adubitative assertion of a thesis that gives an authorization to the scope and a certainty to the results, without knowing whether or not the promised endpoints will be fulfilled. In conclusion, adduction is a convolute (sometime, tautological and para-sylogistic) process of reasoning that makes "prospective prophecies" because of its inference to the predicted premises rather than to the demonstrated conclusions".
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D019359:Knowledge; D008606:Mental Processes; D010811:Natural Science Disciplines