Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The work treats reasoning by analogy as a general inference technique, using a mathematical framework. The meaning of reasoning by analogy is analysed and the implications of this meaning, in the form of constraints on possible models for the reasoning technique, are derived. The analogy graph and the intersection ratio, which together form the central structure of the algorithm, are defined and explored. The problems of relevance in analogies are considered and a treatment of them is given. The algorithm to simulate reasoning by analogy is defined and examples of its use are given. It is shown that the entire structure is computationally feasible to construct and use. A new understanding of the analogy argument is exposed, arising from the model. The role of analogy as a general inference technique and the problems in the use of general inference techniques are outlined