Inheritance Theory

Within artificial intelligence, the need to create sophisticated
intelligent behaviour based on common-sense reasoning has long been
recognized. Research has demonstrated that formalisms for dealing
with common sense reasoning require nonmonotonic capabilities where,
typically, inferences based on incomplete knowledge need to be
revised in light of later information which fills in some of the
gaps.
This book examines a reasoning technique based on multiple
inheritance structures with exceptions (nonmonotonic inheritance
structures). Without an adequate nonmonotonic inheritance reasoning
technique, such as exceptional inheritance reasoning (or EIR) as
proposed in this book, inheritance networks will produce
inconsistencies.
A number of nonmonotonic properties that enable EIR to subsume
existing formalisms, such as default logic and inferential distance
ordering, have been included within this reasoning technique. This
inheritance formalism has been applied to the two important domains
of causal reasoning and analogical reasoning, to demonstrate the
conceptual power and expressiveness of the formalism.

Contents

Preface

• INTRODUCTION - What Is Intelligence? - Hierarchical Organization of Knowledge - Inheritance -
• INHERITANCE HIERARCHIES - AI Knowledge Representation and Inheritance - Inheritance Hierarchy Components Represented as Semantic Networks - Inheritance
  Hierarchical Structures - Exceptions - Mechanisms with Inheritance Structures - Inheritance Formula as a Representation Language
• CURRENT APPROACHES TO NONMONOTONIC REASONING - Introduction -Path-Based Review Literature - Logic-Based Approach - Lattice-Based
  Approach
• THE PROBLEM : A CLASH OF INTUITIONS - Introduction Summary
  
• EIR: AN EXCEPTION-BASED APPROACH TO NONMONOTONIC REASONING - Introduction - Exceptional Inheritance Reasoning - The Exceptional Class - Conceptual Foundations of EIR - EIR Algorithm - Examples -
  The George Problem/ The Generalization of EIR - Related Works - Conclusion
• DEFAULT CORRELATION: AN APPROACH TO INHERITANCE WITH CONFLICT - Introduction - Inheritance - Ambiguity Revisited - Default Correlation Framework Algorithm - A Formal Description of the Representation Language - Conclusion
• APPLICATION: CAUSAL REASONING
  AND EIR - Introduction - Causal Reasoning : Artificial Intelligence Issues - Relation Between Inheritance Structures and Causal Structures - Causality and EIR -Exceptional Inheritance-Causal Algorithm - Script-Story Understanding
• APPLICATION: ANALOGICAL
  REASONING AND EIR - Introduction - The Role of Analogical Reasoning and AI - Reviewed Literature - Analogical Reasoning Revisited - Analogical Inheritance Reasoning - EIR and Analogical Reasoning
• CONCLUSION - What Has Been Achieved - Outstanding Problems