Knowledge-enhancing abduction and eco-cognitive openness reconsidered. Locked and unlocked cognitive strategies

In my opinion, it is only in the framework of a study concerning abductive inference that we can correctly and usefully grasp the cognitive status of reasoning strategies and related heuristics. To this aim, taking advantage of the emph{eco-cognitive model} (EC-model) of abduction, I will analyze strategic reasoning in the perspective of the so-called fill-up and cutdown problems, which characterize abductive cognition. I will also illustrate the abductive character of the so-called ``anticipations'' that share various features with visual and manipulative abduction and prove to be a useful tool to favor the characterization of the two kinds of strategic reasoning I am describing in this article: locked and unlocked abductive strategies. The role of these different cognitive strategies, active both in humans and in computational machines, is also intertwined with the production of different kinds of cognitive hypothetical results, which range from poor to rich level of knowledge and creativity.