Competing hypotheses and abductive inference

This paper explores the nature of competition between hypotheses and the effect of failing to model this relationship correctly when performing abductive inference. In terms of the nature of competition, the importance of the interplay between direct and indirect pathways, where the latter depends o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnals of mathematics and artificial intelligence Vol. 89; no. 1-2; pp. 161 - 178
Main Author Glass, David H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cham Springer International Publishing 01.02.2021
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence
Competition
Complex Systems
Computer Science
Computer simulation
Hypotheses
Inference
Logic programming
Mathematics
Probability
Inference to the best explanation
Computer simulation
Hypothesis competition
Abduction
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Summary:This paper explores the nature of competition between hypotheses and the effect of failing to model this relationship correctly when performing abductive inference. In terms of the nature of competition, the importance of the interplay between direct and indirect pathways, where the latter depends on the evidence under consideration, is investigated. Experimental results show that models which treat hypotheses as mutually exclusive or independent perform well in an abduction problem that requires identifying the most probable hypothesis, provided there is at least some positive degree of competition between the hypotheses. However, even in such cases a significant limitation of these models is their inability to identify a second hypothesis that may well also be true.
ISSN:1012-2443
1573-7470
DOI:10.1007/s10472-019-09630-0