I have a vague idea of what defeasible reasoning is (after reading a quick overview of it in a philosophy book) but I’m wondering if anyone can explain it in more detail.
Also, does anyone know any good books or online resources for information on this subject, particularly about it’s use in artificial intelligence research?
My head spins reading it but here is something for those who wonder what it is:
“The rehabilitation of causation and modal realism in recent analytic philosophy have made possible the revival of the argument
from contingency to the existence of a necessary first cause. Recent work in defeasible or nonmonotonic logic means that this
argument can be cast in such a way that it does not presuppose that every contingent situation, without exception, has a cause.
Instead, the burden of proof is shifted to the skeptic, who must produce positive reasons for thinking that the cosmos is an
exception to the defeasible law of causality. The most promising line of rebuttal open to the skeptic contradicts a plausible
account of the nature of causal priority, namely, that the actuality of a token causes is necessitated by the actuality of its token
effect. Several independent lines of argument in support of this account are outlined.”
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/gifford.html
Whoever wrote that has a government job waiting for them!