Preferences and explanations

Representation theorems for explanatory reasoning based on cumulative models

“…Most of the postulates proposed using this heuristic are similar to those introduced by Flach [10,11]. The results presented in [20,22] provides evidence of the (at least formal) correctness of the postulates in the sense that these postulates allow to develop a theory about explanatory reasoning similar to the KLM theory. The results in the present article provide more supporting evidence about this claim.…”

“…We will show that the explanatory relations of the form £ E can be characterized by the rationality postulates introduced in [20,22] (together with others introduced in this paper). To state more precisely our results, let us call an explanatory relation £ E-cumulative if |∼ £ is cumulative in the KLM sense.…”

“…Despite the absent of a general definition of explanation, there have been several attempts to develop a logical account of explanatory reasoning [1][2][3][4][5]7,[10][11][12]20,22,23]. Some of these attempts have followed the so-called KLM methodology developed by Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor and many others for the study of consequence relations (see [16,18,19] and the references therein).…”

“…These postulates are regarded as the purely logical properties of the reasoning process [12]. We will use the system of postulates introduced in [20,22]. Others systems for explanatory reasoning were studied by Flach [10,11], Bochman [4,5] and Walliser et al [23].…”

“…For this article it is very important the heuristic used in [20,22] to isolate the postulates. Given an explanatory relation £ we associate to it the following consequence relation:…”