🚀 go-pugleaf

You are invited to attend the following QUT IT seminar:

Speaker:  Dr. Nino Rotolo
	  Visiting CIS Scholar
	  Researcher
	  CIRSDID
	  University of Bologna, Italy.

Title: 	 Logical Approaches to Reasoning by Analogy
	 
Date:    Monday, 28th August 2000
Time:    12.00pm
Place:   Lecture Theatre S314 , Faculty of Information Technology,
         Gardens Points Campus, Queensland University of Technology

Abstract:
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In this talk I will  outline some general (and basic) topics for logical 
approaches to reasoning by analogy. Obviously, the first question to be 
solved is defining what conditions justify an analogical inference. A number 
of proposals have been put forth to answer to question. In a traditional 
perspective, a "sound" inference by analogy is defined as a process whereby 
known similarities between a source S and a target T are used as a 
sufficient condition to project new similarities from S onto T. However, 
although the above analysis looks intuitively reasonable, it is really 
problematic. 

Since two individuals (or two situations) can be similar from infinite 
perspectives, it turns out to be very hard to select what properties are 
sufficient to support an appropriate similarity relation with respect to a 
particular context.  Thus the main problem is defining criteria to determine 
such relevant properties.

Some theories are considered, with a particular attention to those that 
represent the relation between source and target in terms of a (syntactic) 
structure mapping from S onto T. In particular, according to Davies and 
Russell, I argue that whenever a relation of similarity between S and T
is recognized, it is presupposed that S is relevant and determinant with
respect to T. Otherwise, we cannot speak of similarity at all.

I maintain also that relevance is a metatheoretic notion and that, accordingly,
reasoning by analogy is a kind of meta-logical reasoning. Finally, I present a 
specific framework for reasoning by analogy for normative contexts. 
In particular, some argumentative strategies are introduced. Such strategies 
can support the analogical application of a rule to a case and take into 
account some general criteria for analogy.  In particular, they work in 
nonmonotonic reasoning contexts and are based on the possibility of 
determining a typical domain of application for each rule.
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