Approaches to abductive reasoning : an overview
Gabriele Merziger · Publications of the UdS (Saarland University) · 1992
Abduction is a form of non-monotonic reasoning that has gained increasing interest in the last few years. The key idea behind it can be represented by the following inference rule frac{varphirightarrowomega,}{varphi}omega, i.e., from an occurrence of omega and the rule implies omega';, infer an occurrence of varphi as a plausible hypothesis or explanation for omega. Thus, in contrast to deduction, abduction is as well as induction a form of defeasible'; inference, i.e., the formulae sanctioned are plausible and submitted to verification. In this paper, a formal description of current approaches is given. The underlying reasoning process is treated independently and divided into two parts. This includes a description of methods for hypotheses generation and methods for finding the best explanations among a set of possible ones. Furthermore, the complexity of the abductive task is surveyed in connection with its relationship to default reasoning. We conclude with the presentation of applications of the discussed approaches focusing on plan recognition and plan generation.