Model-based reconfiguration: Diagnosis and recovery

We extend Reiter's general theory of model-based diagnosis to a theory of fault detection, identification, and reconfiguration (FDIR). The generality of Reiter's theory readily supports an extension in which the problem of reconfiguration is viewed as a close analog of the problem of diagnosis. Using a reconfiguration predicate 'rcfg' analogous to the abnormality predicate 'ab,' we derive a strategy for reconfiguration by transforming the corresponding strategy for diagnosis. There are two obvious benefits of this approach: algorithms for diagnosis can be exploited as algorithms for reconfiguration and we have a theoretical framework for an integrated approach to FDIR. As a first step toward realizing these benefits we show that a class of diagnosis engines can be used for reconfiguration and we discuss algorithms for integrated FDIR. We argue that integrating recovery and diagnosis is an essential next step if this technology is to be useful for practical applications

Parallel versus iterated: comparing population oriented and chained sequential simulated annealing approaches to cost-based abduction

Stochastic search techniques are used to solve NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. Simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and hybridization of both, all attempt to find the best solution with minimal cost and time. Guided Evolutionary Simulated Annealing is one technique of such hybridization. It is based on evolutionary programming where a number of simulated annealing chains are working in a generation to find the optimum solution for a problem. Abduction is the problem of finding the best explanation to a given set of observations. In AI, this has been modeled by a set of hypotheses that need to be assumed to prove the observation or goal. Cost-Based Abduction (CBA) associates a cost to each hypothesis. It is an example of an NP-hard problem, where the objective is to minimize the cost of the assumed hypotheses to prove the goal. Analyzing the search space of a problem is one way of understanding its nature and categorizing it into straightforward, misleading or difficult for genetic algorithms. Fitness-Distance Correlation and Fitness-Distance plots are helpful tools in such analysis. This thesis examines solving the CBA problem using Simulated Annealing and Guided Evolutionary Simulated Annealing and analyses the Fitness-Distance landscape of some Cost-Based abduction problem instances

A Bricolage of Critical Hermeneutics, Abductive Reasoning, and Action Research for Advancing Humanistic Values through Organization Development Practice

This is an emergent and auto-ethnographic study to find ways for the practice of organization development (OD) to recover and sustain humanism in the workplace. It begins with a literature review hermeneutically exploring the history and relevance of three modes of inquiry—hermeneutics, abductive reasoning, and action research—paratactically, which is to say, separately without overlap or reference to each other—to future OD practice. These three modes were selected from an extended literature search for non-reductive modes of inquiry that could address the range of human interests and workplace disease as I understand them. I combined my strong background reading on hermeneutics with the abductive reasoning of C. S. Peirce as two of the modes for review and also reflexively as part of my own methodology. The third mode, action research, is borrowed from the work of Kurt Lewin and his tradition in OD, known for its humanistic and democratic aims. Also included in the literature review is a report on the some of the more salient challenges and opportunities currently confronting the practice of organization development (OD) to provide a context for practical expression of my emerging discoveries. Following the literature review, I hermeneutically surfaced submerged, tacit (hidden-from-consciousness) generative connections from the confluence (flowing together) of the three modes, as they abductively emerged from within my expanding hermeneutic experience (known as a horizon) with the literature review. I then interpret the tacit relevance of that confluence through my life experience, for illuminating those OD challenges and opportunities. Finally this study integrates a sequence of critical hermeneutic and abductive processes in a participatory action research (PAR) pathway leading to plateaus of discovery and renewal through facilitation by humanistically oriented OD praxis. I conclude with five abduced interventions hypothetically drawn from personal case studies. My audience are OD practitioners inclined to develop wholistic humanism in the workplace through facilitative immersion with small groups and micro-cultures. Here they may find enlarged conceptual frames to reconceptualize OD, engage clients in transformative dialogue, and create actionable knowledge in their practice

The Material Theory of Induction

The fundamental burden of a theory of inductive inference is to determine which are the good inductive inferences or relations of inductive support and why it is that they are so. The traditional approach is modeled on that taken in accounts of deductive inference. It seeks universally applicable schemas or rules or a single formal device, such as the probability calculus. After millennia of halting efforts, none of these approaches has been unequivocally successful and debates between approaches persist. The Material Theory of Induction identifies the source of these enduring problems in the assumption taken at the outset: that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it.The content of that logic and where it can be applied are determined by the facts prevailing in that domain. Paying close attention to how inductive inference is conducted in science and copiously illustrated with real-world examples, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference

Proceedings of the IJCAI-09 Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Action and Change

Copyright in each article is held by the authors. Please contact the authors directly for permission to reprint or use this material in any form for any purpose.The biennial workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Action and Change (NRAC) has an active and loyal community. Since its inception in 1995, the workshop has been held seven times in conjunction with IJCAI, and has experienced growing success. We hope to build on this success again this eighth year with an interesting and fruitful day of discussion. The areas of reasoning about action, non-monotonic reasoning and belief revision are among the most active research areas in Knowledge Representation, with rich inter-connections and practical applications including robotics, agentsystems, commonsense reasoning and the semantic web. This workshop provides a unique opportunity for researchers from all three fields to be brought together at a single forum with the prime objectives of communicating important recent advances in each field and the exchange of ideas. As these fundamental areas mature it is vital that researchers maintain a dialog through which they can cooperatively explore common links. The goal of this workshop is to work against the natural tendency of such rapidly advancing fields to drift apart into isolated islands of specialization. This year, we have accepted ten papers authored by a diverse international community. Each paper has been subject to careful peer review on the basis of innovation, significance and relevance to NRAC. The high quality selection of work could not have been achieved without the invaluable help of the international Program Committee. A highlight of the workshop will be our invited speaker Professor Hector Geffner from ICREA and UPF in Barcelona, Spain, discussing representation and inference in modern planning. Hector Geffner is a world leader in planning, reasoning, and knowledge representation; in addition to his many important publications, he is a Fellow of the AAAI, an associate editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and won an ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award in 1990

Artificial Intelligence Research Branch future plans

This report contains information on the activities of the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch (FIA) at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) in 1992, as well as planned work in 1993. These activities span a range from basic scientific research through engineering development to fielded NASA applications, particularly those applications that are enabled by basic research carried out in FIA. Work is conducted in-house and through collaborative partners in academia and industry. All of our work has research themes with a dual commitment to technical excellence and applicability to NASA short, medium, and long-term problems. FIA acts as the Agency's lead organization for research aspects of artificial intelligence, working closely with a second research laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and AI applications groups throughout all NASA centers. This report is organized along three major research themes: (1) Planning and Scheduling: deciding on a sequence of actions to achieve a set of complex goals and determining when to execute those actions and how to allocate resources to carry them out; (2) Machine Learning: techniques for forming theories about natural and man-made phenomena; and for improving the problem-solving performance of computational systems over time; and (3) Research on the acquisition, representation, and utilization of knowledge in support of diagnosis design of engineered systems and analysis of actual systems

Endogenous development: a model for the process of man-environment transaction

Iran is currently subject to a number of adverse factors affecting good development in the built environment: population explosion, oil- dependent economy, finite resources, war and natural disasters, etc. The object of the study is to research a development model appropriate to the Country's needs for a proactive system of building environment. This model is not specific to Iran and, as the case studies and the discourse of the thesis indicate, is universal. However, the author suggests that the validity of development approaches will not be determined as a result of theoretical and ideological debate but in the realm of practice. Therefore, he has explored diverse ways in which professionals in the built environment can provide an analytical survey of the problems that beset them. An attempt has been made to bring these various elements into perspective and offer a model of 'endogenous development'.The process for achieving a viable, exciting and humane built environment is very complex and calls for contributions from many individuals and small multi -disciplinary groups. Beside professionals contributions (which is accomplished by deduction inference), there is a need for people's participation in design process (which is accomplished either by deduction or by abduction inferences). This participatory approach can also help shifting the process of design towards a wider domain that of the 'production process' (which is accomplished by abduction and induction inferences). Production process is the first paradigm of the model of endogenous development and is a manifestation of a feedback mechanism and acts as an open - ended living system. The second is 'supply- demand' paradigm which shows the relationships between the components of a system or between different systems in surface- structuresThis model is directed at society's development, not just its economic growth, but it does not preclude the possibility of such growth. The reduction of the problems' effect in an endogenous development is viewed more as a way of improving the quality of life than of increasing the standard of living. Nowadays, people are passive recipients in the consumer society and are totally dependent on others for their survival. This style of living is assumed to project an image of economic development and higher productivity, but there is a confrontation of preadjusted commodities which are the products of others. That is because the process of production is not natural (i.e. a closed loop cyclic process via feedback control). It is artificial (i.e. an open -loop linear process via a feed -forward control) which may not help satisfying the user's needs and wants entirely. In the built environment, the great majority have no say in the planning and design of their homes or places of work.Accordingly, endogenous development offers a framework within which the necessity of employing the people's creative power in building their environment is explained. It is based on the assumption that each individual and society's knowledge and experiences play a central and mediating role between professionals' perceptions of the environment and a series of preferences judgements or choices they might make towards and within that environment. Indigenous knowledge and cultural attributes of traditional societies and the organizational capabilities of traditional polities are essential in qualification of the development plans, which are also evaluated and assessed by this proposed framework

The Material Theory of Induction

The fundamental burden of a theory of inductive inference is to determine which are the good inductive inferences or relations of inductive support and why it is that they are so. The traditional approach is modeled on that taken in accounts of deductive inference. It seeks universally applicable schemas or rules or a single formal device, such as the probability calculus. After millennia of halting efforts, none of these approaches has been unequivocally successful and debates between approaches persist. The Material Theory of Induction identifies the source of these enduring problems in the assumption taken at the outset: that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it. The content of that logic and where it can be applied are determined by the facts prevailing in that domain