Jumping to explanations versus jumping to conclusions

Abstract:

Abduction is usually defined as the process of inferring the best explanation of an observation. There are many information processing operations that can be viewed as a search for an explanation. For instance, diagnosis, natural language interpretation and plan recognition. This paper is concerned about the following aspects of abduction: (i) what are the logical properties of abduction when it is regarded as a form of inference? and (ii) how close is abduction to reversed deduction? In the logic-based approach to abduction, the background theory is given by a consistent set of formulas Σ. The notion of an explanation is defined by saying that a formula γ (consistent with Σ) is an explanation of α if Σ ⊂ {γ} α. An explanatory relation is a binary relation among formulas where the intended meaning of α γ is "γ is a preferred explanation of α". To each explanatory relation is associated a consequence relation ∼ab, defined as follows: α |∼ab, β if Σ ⊂ {γ} β for each γ such that α γ. The study of the logical properties of explanatory reasoning is approached by a systematic analysis of ∼ab. We show that there are rationality postulates for abduction (i.e., constraints on the explanatory relation) that are, in a very precise sense, equivalent to rationality postulates (in the Krauss-Lehmann-Magidor tradition) for nonmonotonic reasoning (i.e., for the relation |∼ab). This tight correspondence between postulates for explanatory reasoning and nonmonotonic reasoning will make apparent a strong duality between these two forms of inference. Isolating the postulates and showing this duality are the main contributions of the paper. We introduce the notion of a causal explanatory relation and show its close connection with reversed nonmonotonic reasoning. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Año de publicación:

1999

Keywords:

• Nonmonotonic consequence relations
• Abduction
• Explanatory and nonmonotonic reasoning

Fuente:

scopus