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Inferring Causal Explanations

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Book cover Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning and Uncertainty (ECSQARU 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1638))

Abstract

A popular approach to explanations amounts to backward chaining over logical implications encoding causal links. However, the resulting explanations are often unsatisfactory from a common-sense point of view. We define a framework allowing us to distinguish causal implication from mere logical implication. Causal explanations are then deduced through two inference schemes so that explaining is in some way “less than implying” and “more than implying”. Finally, we show how our approach applies to diagnostics.

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Besnard, P., Cordier, MO. (1999). Inferring Causal Explanations. In: Hunter, A., Parsons, S. (eds) Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning and Uncertainty. ECSQARU 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1638. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48747-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48747-6_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66131-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48747-0

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