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Typicality constants and range defaults: Some pros and cons of a cognitive model of default reasoning

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Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS 1991)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 542))

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Abstract

In this paper we discuss a cognitively plausible way to represent statements of typicality. The intuition behind our approach is based on the ability of people to conjure up and reason about a mental concept, or image, which is a typical or generic instance corresponding to a general (indefinite) description. We formalize this intuition by extending a first-order language to include representations of these mental concepts in the form of constant symbols, which we call typ constants, thereby allowing the language to match, more closely, the mental ontology of a commonsense reasoner who reasons with and about such typical mental concepts. Defaults are encoded by simply applying predicate letters to these typ constants.

This approach also quite naturally exhibits some highly desirable formal properties. However, the typ constant approach runs into a limitation, namely the inability to represent what we call range defaults, which turns out to be a difficulty for other default formalisms as well.

This research was supported in part by U.S. Army Research Office grant DAAL03-88-K0087.

Our thanks to Madhura Nirkhe and Chitta Baral for their helpful comments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, 20742, College Park, MD

    Michael J. Miller

  2. Department of Computer Science and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, 20742, College Park, MD

    Donald Perlis

Authors
  1. Michael J. Miller
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  2. Donald Perlis
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Z. W. Ras M. Zemankova

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Miller, M.J., Perlis, D. (1991). Typicality constants and range defaults: Some pros and cons of a cognitive model of default reasoning. In: Ras, Z.W., Zemankova, M. (eds) Methodologies for Intelligent Systems. ISMIS 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 542. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54563-8_119

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54563-8_119

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54563-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38466-3

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