Automated Generation of Erotetic Search Scenarios

Abstract

This article concerns automated generation and processing of erotetic search scenarios (ESSs). ESSs are formal constructs characterized in Inferential Erotetic Logic that enable finding possible answers to a posed question by decomposing it into auxiliary questions. The first part of this work describes a formal account on ESSs. The formal approach is then applied to automatically generate ESSs, and the resulting scenarios are evaluated according to a number of criteria. These criteria are subjected to discordance analysis that reveals their mutual relationships. Finally, knowledge concerning relationships between different values of evaluation criteria is extracted by applying Apriori—an association rules mining algorithm. The proposed approach of integration of formal erotetic logic with computational tools provides extensive insight into the former and helps with the development of efficient ESSs.

Generalized Entailments

“…In subsection 5. 4 we show that some notion of interrogative entailment, occurring quite often in the literature on questions and questioning, can be explicated in terms of constructive generalized entailment. In subsection 5.3 we point out that the concepts of reducibility of questions to sets of questions, elaborated on within Inferential Erotetic Logic, are closely connected with interrogative entailment explicated in the above-mentioned manner.…”

“…Recently a dedicated software which enables, inter alia, automatic generation of e-scenarios out of a predefined set of e-scenarios, has been designed (cf. [4]). This, in view of Theorem 4, brings a computational perspective into research on cg-entailment and/or interrogative entailment.…”