Denis Zwirn

The article presents a novel and extended analysis of reasoning by analogy. It delves deeper into the concept of ‘domain’, derived from Wittgenstein’s idea of categories, which serves as a fundamental aspect in defining relative analogies. Building upon this foundation, it closely examines what the literature refers to as ‘determination rules’, and specifies their probabilistic and non-monotonic forms. A detailed exploration of the range of specific cases that can be encountered, introducing new concepts such as separation rules, counter-determination rules, and counter-separation rules, is proposed. Subsequently, we illustrate how this set of rules enables a unified set of inference schemes of analogical reasoning. This leads to address examples typically treated as independent and specific instances in the literature, often relying on vague epistemic recommendations. The article suggests that reasoning by analogy is a particular case within a broader framework of reasoning by analogy and by difference, shedding light on various analogical debates.

Despite its importance in various fields, analogical reasoning has not yet received a unified formal representation. Our contribution proposes a general scheme of inference that is compatible with different types of logic (deductive, probabilistic, non-monotonic). Firstly, analogical assessment precisely defines the similarity of two objects according to their properties, in a relative rather than absolute way. Secondly, analogical inference transfers a new property from one object to a similar one, thanks to an over-hypothesis linking two sets of properties. The belief strength in the conclusion is then directly related to the belief strength in this meta-hypothesis.

RésuméEn dépit de son importance dans divers domaines, le raisonnement analogique n'a pas encore reçu de représentation formelle unifiée. Notre contribution propose un schéma d'inférence général, compatible avec différentes logiques (déductive, probabiliste, non monotone). Premièrement, un énoncé analogique définit précisément la similarité entre deux objets en fonction de leurs propriétés, de façon relative et non absolue. Deuxièmement, une inférence analogique transfère une propriété nouvelle d'un objet à un objet similaire, grâce à une hypothèse d'arrière-plan qui relie deux ensembles de propriétés. Le degré de croyance dans la conclusion est alors directement relié au degré de croyance dans cette méta-hypothèse.

When is it possible to decide that a theory is confirmed by the available evidence? Probabilities seem first to be the good framework for addressing this question. But the philosophers of science did not succeed in building any probabilistic criterion of confirmation beyond dispute. We examine two of the main reasons for this failure. First, the principles of adequacy used by philosophers are often logically inconsistent with each other. We show in the paper how to build consistent subsets of these principles. We identify three main subsets which embody the principles of adequacy for two main kinds of confirmation, namely the relative confirmation and the absolute confirmation. Second, we prove the impossibility of building any probabilistic criterion for absolute confirmation.

Abduction was first introduced in the epistemological context of scientific discovery. It was more recently analyzed in artificial intelligence, especially with respect to diagnosis analysis or ordinary reasoning. These two fields share a common view of abduction as a general process of hypotheses formation. More precisely, abduction is conceived as a kind of reverse explanation where a hypothesis H can be abduced from events E if H is a good explanation of E. The paper surveys four known schemes for abduction that can be used in both fields. Its first contribution is a taxonomy of these schemes according to a common semantic framework based on belief revision. Its second contribution is to produce, for each non-trivial scheme, a representation theorem linking its semantic framework to a set of postulates. Its third contribution is to present semantic and axiomatic arguments in favor of one of these schemes, ordered abduction, which has never been vindicated in the literature.

The justification of Bayes' rule by cognitive rationality principles is undertaken by extending the propositional axiom systems usually proposed in two contexts of belief change: revising and updating. Probabilistic belief change axioms are introduced, either by direct transcription of the set-theoretic ones, or in a stronger way but nevertheless in the spirit of the underlying propositional principles. Weak revising axioms are shown to be satisfied by a General Conditioning rule, extending Bayes' rule but also compatible with others, and weak updating axioms by a General Imaging rule, extending Lewis' rule. Strong axioms (equivalent to the Miller–Popper axiom system) are necessary to justify Bayes' rule in a revising context, and justify in fact an extended Bayes' rule which applies, even if the message has zero probability.