Concept representations and nonmonotonic inferences
Peter Gärdenfors
In Logic for a Change: Essays dedicated to Sten Lindström
on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday,
Uppsala Prints and Preprints in Philosophy 1995:9, Uppsala, pp. 25-39.
Revised version to appear in Mathware.
Abstract
The theory of nonmonotonic inferences has focused on propositions; hence it has been seen as a nonmonotonic logic. However, in the examples discussed in the literature, the great majority derive from the nonmonotonicity of concepts. Representing information in the propositional form tends to suppress the structure of concepts.
The main purpose of this article is to bring out the role of conceptual structure in nonmonotonic inferences. I argue that there are several, albeit related, kinds of nonmonotonic inferences that appear in the use of concepts. In order to explain these phenomena, I go beyond propositional representations. The representational framework I use is based on conceptual spaces.
The paper is available in PostScript format
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