IJCAI'97 Workshop on
Abduction and Induction in AI
Nagoya, August 23-25, 1997 (one day)
Submission deadline: March 10, 1997
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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.
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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:
1. What (if anything) distinguishes/characterizes each form of reasoning
and their corresponding computational models?
2. How can we characterize different prototypical AI tasks for which it is
appropriate to use one of these two forms of reasoning?
3. How can Abduction and Induction be integrated in the context of
Artificial Intelligence problems? For example,
o How do we learn abductive theories?
o How do we use abduction in machine learning problems?
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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!
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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
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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
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WWW location: http://machtig.kub.nl:2080/IJCAI97/CFP.html