Subject: CFP: ECAI96 WS Abductive and Inductive Reasoning
From: [email-masked] (Peter A. Flach)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 15:42:00 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.ai

First Call for Papers

                             ECAI'96 Workshop on

                      Abductive and Inductive Reasoning

                          Budapest, August 12, 1996

BACKGROUND

Abduction and induction are important forms of hypothetical reasoning, i.e.
inferences from essentially incomplete information. Abduction is generally
understood as reasoning from effects to causes or explanations, and
induction as inferring general rules from specific data. In Artificial
Intelligence, a typical application of abduction is diagnosis, and a typical
application of induction is learning from examples.

As logical inference operations, both abduction and induction embody a form
of "reversed" deduction: together with the background knowledge, the
hypothesis should entail a given set of observations. However, the two
inference operations differ significantly in the way they satisfy and use
this basic specification.

   * Abduction is used to generate a reason, an explanation, for the truth
     of the observation in terms of hypotheses which are typically specific
     to the situation and individual objects at hand. Each separate
     observation will get its own explanation, not necessarily related to
     the explanations of other observations, and not intended to account for
     other (later) observations.

   * On the other hand, induction is used when we want to synthesize the
     information conveyed by the observations into a hypothesis that can
     account for all the observations together in a common way. Moreover,
     this hypothesis will also be able to account for other new observations
     on different objects than those involved in the original observations.

Hence typically an abductive hypothesis consists of specific facts further
describing the situation at hand, while an inductive hypothesis consists of
general rules pertaining to a whole class of situations. This distinction
can be traced back to Peirce's syllogistic classification of deduction,
abduction and induction.

However, this intuitive distinction between abductive and inductive
hypotheses does not seem to be fully captured by contemporary models of
abductive and inductive reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. For example,
by comparing the models employed in Abductive and Inductive Logic
Programming one can show superficially (using naming and syntactical
transformations) that they are equivalent. This perceived "equivalence"
between abduction and induction runs counter to practical experience, since
the algorithms involved are rather different.

WORKSHOP FOCUS

This workshop is intended to improve our understanding of the inference
operations underlying abductive and inductive reasoning, and the relation
between the two. A specific goal will be to develop ideas upon which
semantic and computational frameworks of integration of abduction and
induction can be built, suitable for problems in Artificial Intelligence.

General topics of interest are the following:

   * philosophical and logical backgrounds of abduction and induction
   * semantics for abduction and induction
   * frameworks of integration of abduction and induction
   * algorithmic differences and similarities between abduction and
     induction
   * abduction in inductive Machine Learning
   * induction in Abductive Reasoning

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

It is the organizers' intention to provoke a genuine workshop atmosphere. In
order to achieve this we sollicit position papers rather than full technical
papers. Furthermore, the presentations and discussions at the workshop will
be limited to a few key issues.

Position papers

By a position paper we mean a short paper (2-4 pages) that is specifically
written for the purposes of this workshop. It may contain a brief summary of
one's own research programme and results, but it should address at least one
general topic of the workshop and identify general issues related to or
arising from this work. Authors are encouraged to indicate general problems
that they believe need to be adressed and therefore should be amongst the
topics of discussion at the workshop. Submission of a position paper would
normally be required for participation in the workshop. The number of
participants will be limited to max. 30.

Your position paper should reach the Organizing Committee by March 31, 1996.
Email submissions are encouraged (ASCII or LaTeX; for other formats see the
workshop's WWW pages). Submissions should be sent to the following address:

        Peter Flach, ECAI'96 workshop
        INFOLAB, Tilburg University
        POBox 90153, 5000 LE  Tilburg, the Netherlands
        email [email-masked]

Submitted papers will be evaluated by the Organizing Committee. Selected
position papers will be available at the workshop. Authors of selected
papers may expand these to a maximum of 8 pages. These papers as well as a
list of discussion topics arising from them will be distributed among the
participants before the workshop.

WWW pages

Additional material will be made available through the workshop's WWW pages
at http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/ECAI96/index.html (under construction). Here
we will assemble background material, as well as a questionnaire to be
completed by participants. By June we will also put selected papers and a
list of discussion topics here.

Workshop format

The workshop itself will consist of presentations and moderated discussions.
The presentations are intended to put the issues under discussion into
context. Some of the presentations will be summaries of the selected
position papers. The discussions will each address one of the main topics of
the workshop; they are explicitly intended to reach some form of agreement
or conclusion. The topics for discussion will be preselected by the
Organizing Committee according to the submitted papers, but participants
will be encouraged to propose other topics at the workshop.

Edited volume

An edited volume containing papers as well as summaries of the discussions
and conclusions reached at the workshop is planned provided that there are
sufficient contributions of high enough standard. This isssue will be
discussed further at the workshop with the participants.

TIMETABLE

March 31, 1996
     deadline for submission
April 26, 1996
     notification of acceptance/rejection and invitation of speakers
June 7, 1996
     deadline for final versions of papers
July 5, 1996
     distribution of discussion topics and papers
August 12 or 13, 1996
     workshop

Please note that in order to participate in this workshop you have to
register for the main conference!

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Marc Denecker
     Dept. of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Luc De Raedt
     Dept. of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Peter Flach
     INFOLAB, Tilburg University
Antonis Kakas
     Dept. of Computer Science, University of Cyprus

Enquiries can be directed to Peter Flach or Antonis Kakas at the following
addresses:

Peter Flach
INFOLAB, Tilburg University
POBox 90153, 5000 LE  Tilburg, the Netherlands
tel. +31 13 4663119
fax  +31 13 4663069
email [email-masked]

Antonis Kakas
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Cyprus
POBox 537, CY-1678  Nicosia, Cyprus
tel. +357 2 338705/4
fax  +357 2 339062
email [email-masked]