Call for Papers
IJCAI'97 Workshop on
Abduction and Induction in AI
Nagoya, 24 August, 1997
Submission deadline: March 10, 1997
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 (or
inductive generalisation) 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, our current understanding of the
logical inference operations underlying abduction and induction is
incomplete and incoherent. For instance, 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. This view is incomplete, since in many cases
abductive or inductive hypotheses do not entail the observations. It is
also incoherent, in that it does not recognise the fundamental differences
between abduction and induction.
This workshop is intended to improve our understanding of the inference
operations underlying abductive and inductive reasoning, and the relation
between the two. Particular emphasis will be given to the study of these
forms of inference in the context of Artificial Intelligence.
Workshop focus
This workshop is the second of its kind, the first one being organised
at ECAI'96 in Budapest. The previous workshop brought together people
from different disciplines, and identified some of the main general
issues (see the workshop report at
http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/ECAI96/report.html).
The aim of this second workshop is to address the issue of
abduction and induction in the context of practical AI problems. The
following questions summarise the workshop's focus:
- What (if anything) distinguishes/characterizes each form of reasoning
and their corresponding computational models?
- How can we characterize different prototypical AI tasks for which
it is appropriate to use one of these two forms of reasoning?
- How can Abduction and Induction be integrated in the context of
Artificial Intelligence problems? For example,
- How do we learn abductive theories?
- How do we use abduction in machine learning problems?
How to contribute
It is the organizers' 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 (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 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 March 10, 1997.
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, IJCAI'97 workshop
INFOLAB, Tilburg University
POBox 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands
email Peter.Flach@kub.nl
Submitted papers will be evaluated by the Program Committee. Authors of
accepted 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 available
on-line before the workshop.
On-line material
Additional background material will be made available through the
workshop's WWW pages at
http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/IJCAI97/, or by anonymous FTP at
ftp://machtig.kub.nl/IJCAI97/.
Workshop notes of the ECAI'96 workshop, as well as a workshop report, can
be found at http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/ECAI96/
.
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 IJCAI'97!
Timetable
| March 10, 1997
| deadline for submission
|
| March 31, 1997
| notification of acceptance/rejection and invitation of speakers
|
| April 21, 1997
| deadline for final versions of papers
|
| August 23-25, 1997
| workshop
|
Program Committee
| Peter Flach
| Tilburg University, the Netherlands
|
| Randy Goebel
| University of Alberta, Canada
|
| Katsumi Inoue
| Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan
|
| John Josephson
| Ohio State University, USA
|
| Antonis Kakas
| University of Cyprus, Cyprus
|
| Ray Mooney
| University of Texas at Austin, USA
|
| Chiaki Sakama
| Wakayama University, Japan
|
Organizing committee
Peter Flach
INFOLAB, Tilburg University
POBox 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands
tel. +31 13 4663119
fax +31 13 4663069
email Peter.Flach@kub.nl
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
Ray Mooney
Dept. of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1188, USA
tel. +1 512 471 9558
fax +1 512 471 8885
email mooney@cs.utexas.edu
Chiaki Sakama
Dept. of Computer and Communication Sciences, Wakayama University
930 Sakaedani, Wakayama 640, Japan
tel. +81 734 54 0361 (Ext. 2904)
fax +81 734 54 0391
email sakama@sys.wakayama-u.ac.jp
Last change: December 13, 1996 / Peter Flach
WWW location: http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/IJCAI97/CFP.html