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[Ron Sun]

Preprint available:
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title: 
      Robust Reasoning: Integrating Rule-Based and Similarity-Based Reasoning

               Ron Sun
           Department of Computer Science
           The University of Alabama
           Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
           rsun at cs.ua.edu

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to appear in: Artificial Intelligence (AIJ),    Spring 1995 
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The paper attempts to account for common patterns in commonsense reasoning
through integrating  rule-based reasoning and similarity-based reasoning
as embodied in connectionist models.  Reasoning examples are analyzed and
a diverse range of patterns is identified.  A principled synthesis based on 
simple rules and similarities is performed, which unifies these patterns that 
were before difficult to be accounted for without specialized mechanisms 
individually.  A two-level connectionist architecture with dual representations 
is proposed as a computational mechanism for carrying out the theory.
It is shown in detail how the common patterns can be generated
by this mechanism.  Finally, it is argued that the brittleness problem
of rule-based models can be remedied in a principled way, with the theory
proposed here.  This work  demonstrates that
combining rules and  similarities can result in more robust
reasoning models, and many seemingly disparate patterns of commonsense
reasoning are actually different manifestations of the same underlying process
and can be generated using the integrated architecture,
which captures the underlying process to a large extent.

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* It is FTPable from  aramis.cs.ua.edu 
  in: /pub/tech-reports 
* No hardcopy available.

* FTP procedure:
        unix> ftp aramis.cs.ua.edu
        Name: anonymous
        Password: (email-address) 
        ftp> cd pub/tech-reports
        ftp> binary
        ftp> get sun.aij.ps.Z
        ftp> quit
        unix> uncompress sun.aij.ps.Z
        unix> lpr sun.aij.ps (or however you print postscript)
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(A number of other publications are also available for
 FTP under pub/tech-reports)


================================================================
Dr. Ron Sun                      
Department of Computer Science            phone: (205) 348-6363
The University of Alabama                 fax:   (205) 348-0219
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487                      rsun at athos.cs.ua.edu
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