Conceptual spaces and the strength of similarity-based arguments

Towards a theory of abduction based on conditionals

“…For an assessment of similarity-based arguments in the context of inferentialism, seeDouven, Elqayam, Gärdenfors & Mirabile (2022a) .…”

Williamson’s Abductive Case for the Material Conditional Account

“…19 The intuitive understanding here is that anyone justified in believing A becomes justified to believe C as soon as she becomes justified to believe A ⇒ C (e.g., on the basis of testimony), supposing her being informed that if A, C, does not undermine whatever justifies her belief in A. 20 There is already robust empirical support for the thought that inferential connections (including nondeductive ones) play a central role in how people 18 See also Krzyżanowska [39], Douven [15,16], Vidal and Baratgin [91], Douven et al [19,22], Iacona [33], Rostworowski et al [68], Sikorski [74]. 19 For work on the logic of the inferential conditional, see Crupi and Iacona [11,12], Raidl et al [66], and Iacona [33].…”

“…But as also argued in Krzyżanowska et al [43], there is nothing in the idea itself that commits one to reading "inference" as meaning deductive inference. 18 A more plausible interpretation-according to these authors-is that the consequent is inferrible from the antecedent in the sense that a compelling case can be made for the consequent starting from the antecedent and whatever background assumptions are available in the context of evaluation, where a compelling argument need not consist only of deductive steps, and indeed need not contain any deductive steps at all, but may include or consist only of inductive steps (roughly, steps based on statistical considerations; Kyburg and Teng [44]), abductive steps (roughly, steps based on explanatory considerations; Douven [17]), and perhaps other inferential steps as well (e.g., steps based on analogical considerations; see Carnap, 1980; Paris & Vencovská, 2018; Douven et al [18]).…”

“…For further evidence, see Krzyżanowska et al [40], Vidal and Baratgin [91], Krzyżanowska and Douven [41], Stewart et al ( 2021), Douven et al [18], and Rostworowski et al [68]. 21 What does inferentialism entail for (EQ) and for the triviality result that threatens it?…”

Region-Based Merging of Open-Domain Terminological Knowledge

“…In this paper, to handle the merging problem, we take inspiration from conceptual spaces, which are geometric representation frameworks, in which the objects are represented as points in a topological space, and concepts are modelled as regions (Haarslev and Möller 1997;Gärdenfors 2000;Douven et al 2022). Motivated by the fact that conceptual knowledge in an ontology can be to some extent modelled as geometric objects and constraints on metric spaces (Bouraoui et al 2020b), this paper proposes a method for ontology merging that takes advantage of qualitative spatial reasoning to find out a relevant compromise between sources while resolving conflicts.…”