Mechanizing Hypothesis Formation

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XV

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2. Introduction: What is a Logic of Discovery

   1. Introduction: What is a Logic of Discovery

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 1-24

3. A Logic of Induction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 25-25

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   2. A Formalization of Observational and Theoretical Languages

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 26-52

   3. The Logic of Observational Functor Calculi

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 53-121

   4. Logical Foundations of Computational Statistics

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 122-181

   5. Rank Calculi

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 182-234

4. A Logic of Suggestion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 235-235

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   2. Listing of Important Observational Statements and Related Logical Problems

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 236-287

   3. A General GUHA-Method with Associational Quantifers

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 288-330

   4. Further Statistical Problems of the Logic of Discovery

      • Petr Hájek, Tomáš Havránek

      Pages 331-386

5. Back Matter

   Pages 387-398

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Hypothesis formation is known as one of the branches of Artificial Intelligence, The general question of Artificial IntelligencE' ,"Can computers think?" is specified to the question ,"Can computers formulate and justify hypotheses?" Various attempts have been made to answer the latter question positively. The present book is one such attempt. Our aim is not to formalize and mechanize the whole domain of inductive reasoning. Our ultimate question is: Can computers formulate and justify scientific hypotheses? Can they comprehend empirical data and process them rationally, using the apparatus of modern mathematical logic and statistics to try to produce a rational image of the observed empirical world? Theories of hypothesis formation are sometimes called logics of discovery. Plotkin divides a logic of discovery into a logic of induction: studying the notion of justification of a hypothesis, and a logic of suggestion: studying methods of suggesting reasonable hypotheses. We use this division for the organization of the present book: Chapter I is introductory and explains the subject of our logic of discovery. The rest falls into two parts: Part A - a logic of induction, and Part B - a logic of suggestion.

• Formation
• Künstliche Intelligenz
• artificial intelligence
• function
• intelligence
• mathematical logic
• optimization

• Mathematical Institute, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Praha, Czechoslovakia

  Petr Hájek

• Department of Biomathematics, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Praha, Czechoslovakia

  Tomáš Havránek

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