
Product Description Ever since William of Ockham declared that in situations accounted for by multiple explanations one should prefer the simpler explanation, scholars have struggled with how to use this advice. Chance discovery is about investigations at that boundary of deduction and induction, where a situation described with partial Possible "explanations." The boundary between deduction- n where our explanations are provably correct, and induction---where our explanations are plausible but improvable, is proving to be broader and more complicated than we first thought. Our search for plausible methods of "jumping to conclusions" has produced everything from methods that reveal a complex tradeoff through unexplainable but apparently effective application of heuristics, to overformalized logical systems which leave no scope for new forms of knowledge. This volume captures what could be argued as the complete repertoire of the three most important aspects of understanding this landscape between deduction and induction. Even the concept of "chance discovery" captures the problem: what knowledge leads, perhaps by "chance" to improved selection of explanations, without denying the possibility of other as-yet-missing knowledge? Included in this three segment volume are first a broad repertoire of various knowledge-driven heuristics which demonstrate improved identification of "chance" across diverse applications. The examples of different heuristics include the identification and use of emotional responses, tracking of eye movements, chance discovery to understand multilanguage browsing behaviour, as well as more conventional application of analogical reasoning methods. The second segment provides a sampling of formalization methods for chance discovery, which walk the fine line between identifying new knowledge forms that can be brought within formalized reasoning, without closing the door to the richness of partial information situations. Included here are
Page Count:
411
Publication Date:
2005-01-01
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