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Internal consistency in plausible reasoning systems

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Abstract

The usual approach to plausible reasoning is to associate a validity measure with each fact or rule, and to compute from these a validity measure for any deduction that is made. This approach is shown to be inappropriate for some classes of problems, particularly those in which the evidence is not internally consistent. Three current plausible reasoning architectures are summarised and each applied to the same small task. An analysis of the performance of these systems reveals deficiencies in each case. The paper then outlines a new approach based on the discovery of consistent subsets of the given evidence. This system can be used either in isolation or in conjunction with a validity-propagating architecture. Comparative results from implementations of all four systems are presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing Sciences, New South Wales Institute of Technology, 2007, Sydney, Australia

    J. R. Quinlan

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  1. J. R. Quinlan
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Additional information

This paper is based on, and extends, a paper given at the 8th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Karlsruhe, 1983.

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Quinlan, J.R. Internal consistency in plausible reasoning systems. NGCO 3, 157–180 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037067

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037067

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