Analogical Proportions and Binary Trees

Abstract

AbstractAnalogical reasoning has been thought for a longtime as something aside, away from logical reasoning. However, it is not exactly so. This chapter in its first part mainly surveys works of the last decade, which have proposed a logical modeling of analogical proportions (i.e., statements of the form “a is to b as c is to d”) among other logically expressible proportions and have shown their use in analogical inference. It also emphasizes the pervasiveness of analogical proportions as soon as we compare situations. The second part of the chapter shows that dichotomous trees built from pairs of mutually exclusive properties have also a reading in terms of Boolean analogical proportions, thus providing another clue of the links existing between analogy and logically expressed taxonomies. This also gives birth to noticeable opposition structures and can be related to formal concept analysis.KeywordsAnalogical reasoningAnalogical proportionTaxonomic treeStructure of oppositionFormal concept analysisComparisonMathematics Subject Classification (2000)Primary 03B99; Secondary 03A9903B0597F80