Call for Papers
ECAI'98 Workshop on
Abduction and Induction in AI
Brighton, August 25, 1998
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~flach/ECAI98/
submission deadline: April 17, 1998
Background
Abduction and induction have been recognized as important forms of reasoning
with incomplete information that are appropriate for many problems in
Artificial Intelligence. 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.
In spite of their importance in AI, there is a considerable lack of
agreement regarding the logical inference operations underlying
abduction and induction. On one hand, both abduction and induction are
often perceived as embodying a form of "reversed" deduction: together
with the background knowledge, the hypothesis should entail a given
observation or set of observations. However, it is often argued that in
many cases abductive or inductive hypotheses do not entail the
observations. Furthermore, it is an open issue whether the number of
observations (one or few in the case of abduction, many in the case of
induction) constitutes a fundamental difference between the two forms of
reasoning, and how this should be formalised.
Workshop focus
This workshop is the third of its kind, the
first one
having been organised at ECAI'96 in Budapest, and the
second one at IJCAI'97 in Nagoya.
The first workshop was successful in bringing people from different
disciplines together, and in identifying some of the main general issues.
The second workshop approached the issue of integrating abduction and
induction from a more practical AI perspective. The main conclusion to be
drawn from these two workshops is that whether one perceives abduction and
induction as two of a kind or as fundamentally different reasoning forms
depends strongly on the domain of application and the particular AI approach
employed. Hence, an appropriate question to ask is not "What is the relation
between abduction and induction", but rather "What are good reasons for
perceiving them as fundamentally different or fundamentally similar?"
The workshop will thus aim to address the following questions:
- What are the typical AI problems to which abduction and induction
can be applied? How can these problems be characterised?
Can these characteristics be formalised?
- Until now the computational methods involved in abduction and
induction have been quite different. Does this demonstrate that
abduction and induction should be distinguished rather than identified?
- if yes, how can these different methods be integrated?
- if no, how can the methods from one form of reasoning be employed
in the other?
- What is the appropriate logical framework for reasoning about
the differences and similarities between abduction and induction?
Is the question of distinguishing or identifying abduction and
induction merely dependent on the level of abstraction?
How to contribute
It is the organisers' intention to provoke a genuine workshop atmosphere. In
order to achieve this we solicit 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 (3-5 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. An effort should be made to
cover both forms of reasoning rather than concentrating mainly on one of
the two. Authors are encouraged to indicate general problems that they
believe need to be addressed 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 Program Committee by April 17, 1998.
Email submissions are encouraged (PostScript, HTML, ASCII, or LaTeX;
for other formats see the workshop's
WWW pages).
Submissions should be sent to the following address:
Peter Flach, ECAI'98 workshop
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bristol
Merchant Venturers Building, Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UB, United Kingdom
email Peter.Flach@cs.bris.ac.uk
Submitted papers will be evaluated by the Program Committee. Authors of
accepted papers may expand these to a maximum of 6 pages. These papers as
well as a list of discussion topics arising from them will be available
on-line before the workshop.
On-line material
Additional background material will be made available through the
workshop's WWW pages at
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~flach/ECAI98/.
Links to material concerning the previous two workshops, including
contributed papers and and workshop reports, can also be found on this
page.
There is an email discussion list for topics concerning abduction and
induction; contact Peter Flach if
you want to be included.
Workshop format
The workshop itself will consist of presentations and moderated discussions. The
presentations are intended to put the issues under discussion into context.
The speakers will be selected among the authors of accepted papers by the
Program Committee. In addition, there will be one or two invited
speaker(s).
The discussions will each address one of the main topics of the workshop.
The topics for discussion will be preselected by the Program Committee
according to the submitted papers, but participants will be encouraged to
propose other topics at the workshop.
Please note that in order to participate in this workshop you have to
register for ECAI'98!
Timetable
| April 17, 1998
| deadline for submission
|
| May 13, 1998
| notification of acceptance/rejection and invitation of speakers
|
| June 8, 1998
| deadline for final versions of papers
|
| August 25, 1998
| workshop
|
Program Committee
| Henning Christiansen
| Roskilde Universtiy, Denmark
|
| Luca Console
| University of Torino, Italy
|
| Peter Flach (co-chair)
| University of Bristol, United Kingdom
|
| Randy Goebel
| University of Alberta, Canada
|
| Katsumi Inoue
| Kobe University, Japan
|
| John Josephson
| Ohio State University, USA
|
| Antonis Kakas (co-chair)
| University of Cyprus, Cyprus
|
| Chiaki Sakama
| Wakayama University, Japan
|
Workshop organisers
Peter Flach (primary contact)
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bristol
Merchant Venturers Building, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UB, United Kingdom
tel. +44 117 9545162
fax +44 117 9545208
email Peter.Flach@cs.bris.ac.uk
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 antonis@turing.cs.ucy.ac.cy
Last change: 7 April, 1998 |
Peter Flach
WWW location: http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~flach/ECAI98/CFP.html