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Counterfactual Reasoning

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Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2116))

Abstract

Primary goal of this paper is to show that counterfactual reasoning, as many other kinds of common sense reasoning, can be studied and analyzed through what we can call a cognitive approach, that represents knowledge as structured and partitioned into different domains, everyone of which has a specific theory, but can exchange data and information with some of the others. Along these lines, we are going to show that a kind of “counterfactual attitude” is pervasive in a lot of forms of common sense reasoning, as in theories of action, beliefs/intentions ascription, cooperative and antagonistic situations, communication acts. The second purpose of the paper is to give a reading of counterfactual reasoning as a specific kind of contextual reasoning, this latter interpreted according to the theory of MultiContext Systems developed by Fausto Giunchiglia and his group.

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ferrario, R. (2001). Counterfactual Reasoning. In: Akman, V., Bouquet, P., Thomason, R., Young, R. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2116. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44607-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44607-9_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42379-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44607-1

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