Theory Of Explanatory Coherence Research Articles

Mental health assessment: Inference, explanation, and coherence.

Mental health professionals such as psychiatrists and psychotherapists assess their patients by identifying disorders that explain their symptoms. This assessment requires an inference to the best explanation that compares different disorders with respect to how well they explain the available evidence. Such comparisons are captured by the theory of explanatory coherence that states 7 principles for evaluating competing hypotheses in the light of evidence. The computational model ECHO shows how explanatory coherence can be efficiently computed. We show the applicability of explanatory coherence to mental health assessment by modelling a case of psychiatric interviewing and a case of psychotherapeutic evaluation. We argue that this approach is more plausible than Bayesian inference and hermeneutic interpretation.

Extensions and modifications to explanatory coherence

Thagard’s theory of explanatory coherence (TEC) and its implementation ECHO might be considered as the de facto calculus of explanatory coherence. It is an elaborate framework to compare competing scientific theories. Recently, it has become apparent that TEC is also useful as a tool for the analysis of different scenarios in so-called sense-making systems. To this end, it is expedient to discuss a number of extensions and modifications to TEC. This article proposes a number of extensions and modifications to TEC in the context of sense-making systems. The following topics are discussed: input format, representation of false formulas, representation languages, relaxation methods, schemes of coherence, meta-explanations, scenarios, leaking hypotheses, knowledge acquisition, and contextual explanation. The discussion is detailed enough to carry through changes in existing sense-making systems.

Commentary: Exploratory data analysis.

Commentary: Exploratory data analysis.

MODELING BELIEF CHANGE IN A POPULATION USING EXPLANATORY COHERENCE

A simulation model that represents belief change within a population of agents who are connected by a social network is presented based on Thagard's theory of explanatory coherence. In this model there are a fixed number of represented beliefs, each of which are either held or not by each agent. These are conceived of existing against a background of a large set of (unrepresented) shared beliefs. These beliefs are to different extents coherent with each other — this is modeled using a coherence function from possible sets of core beliefs to [-1, 1]. The social influence is achieved through gaining of a belief across a social link. Beliefs can be lost by being dropped from an agent's store. Both of these processes happen with a probability related to the change in coherence that would result in an agent's belief store. A resulting measured "opinion" can be retrieved in a number of ways, here as a weighted sum of a pattern of the core beliefs — opinion is thus an outcome and not directly processed by agents. This model suggests hypotheses about group opinion dynamics that differ from that of many established models.

Expert Decision Making in a Complex Engineering Environment

This study investigated the complex decisions made by engineers when conducting contaminated-land risk assessments. Experienced assessors studied summaries of site reports, which were composed of different combinations of relevant cues, and decided on the risk level of each site. Models from three theories of decision making were compared. Applying judgment analysis to develop a lens model provided the best account of the data, lending support to social judgment theory. A model based on a fast-and-frugal heuristic, the matching heuristic, did not fit the data as well; nor did a coherence model based on the theory of explanatory coherence. Comparison with decisions generated with the use of industry guidance showed only a moderate fit, suggesting that the standard procedure does not accurately represent how highly proficient domain practitioners make assessments in this context. Qualitative analyses of comments made by participants suggested that they used a combined approach that applied key cues as predicted by social judgment theory, integrated into a meaningful, coherent account, as predicted by the theory of explanatory coherence. Overall, these findings suggest a novel process in which a range of information is combined to form a coherent explanation of the data but in which key cues are more influential than others.

Convince Me: Modeling Naturalistic Decision Making

This paper is positioned in response to a call for an exchange of dialogue between researchers in the fields of macrocognition and computational modeling. Our work encourages examination of the complementarities that exist between these fields proposing that some of the challenges associated with micromodeling perspectives may be addressed by drawing upon “midgranularity” cognitive architectures. The study documented here demonstrates the value of modeling macrocognitive phenomena using the midgranularity architecture Convince Me. Our results suggested a moderate degree of fit between fund managers' decision making and the theory of explanatory coherence. Insights into the macrocognitive processes of sense making, uncertainty management, and mental simulation are examined. We anticipate that this will demonstrate the utility of computational modeling for revealing the shortcomings of macrocognitive models and that this will not only motivate increased theoretical specification but will also assist in the legitimization of cognitive modeling methods within macrocognitive inquiry.

On the permissiveness of the abductive theory of method

In this article, the author examines Romeijn's (2008) contention that the account of theory construction in the abductive theory of scientific method suffers from the problem of the underdetermination of theories by empirical evidence. Following Romeijn, the author focuses on the issue of underdetermination as it affects the method of exploratory factor analysis, the strategy of analogical modeling, and the theory of explanatory coherence. The author argues that in each case there are sufficient methodological resources available to researchers to use these methods to good effect. Additionally, he comments on the normative force of the abductive theory of method.

Protocol modeling, textual analysis, the bifurcation/bootstrapping method, andConvince Me: Computer-based techniques for studying beliefs and their revision

This paper traces a progression of four computer-based methods for studying and fostering both the structure and the on-line development of knowledge. Each empirical technique employs ECHO, a connectionist model that instantiates the theory of explanatory coherence (TEC). First, verbal pro­ tocols of subjects' reasonings were modeled post hoc. Next, ECHOpredicted, a priori, subjects' text­ based believability ratings. Later, the bifurcation/bootstrapping method was developed to elicit and account for individuals' background knowledge, while assessing intercoder reliability regarding ECHO simulations. Finally, Convince Me, our reasoner's workbench, automated the explication both of subjects' knowledge bases and of their belief assessments; the Convince Me software per­ mits contrasts between the model's predictions and subjects' proposition-wise evaluations. These ex­ perimental systems enhance our understanding of the relationships among-and determinant fea­ tures regarding-hypotheses, evidence, and the arguments that incorporate them. Human reasoning and argumentation represent some of the most vexing phenomena of cognitive psychology. Whether one is opining about 0.1. Simpson's guilt or in­ nocence at the local pub, or explaining new logic-puzzle data to colleagues, several difficulties arise. First, the ex­ tent ofan individual's initial knowledge base is rarely clear: What does a person know, and what does a person not know? Determining the mechanisms by which people add to their knowledge is also difficult: How variable are indi­ viduals' inference engines? Finally, for a terminal corpus ofbeliefs, some propositions seem evidentiary, some seem more hypothetical, and all have varying confidence levels: How do we assess these features of a person's thinking?

Is Thagard's theory of explanatory coherence the new logical positivism?

Is Thagard's theory of explanatory coherence the new logical positivism?

The Explanatory Coherence of Continental Drift

In the nineteen-sixties, plate tectonics became the accepted theoretical framework in the earth sciences. This framework revived the idea of continental drift that had been first proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener (1966). This paper offers an analysis of the arguments of Wegener and his opponents. We shall show that from Wegener’s perspective his hypotheses possessed a high degree of explanatory coherence, while from the opponents’ perspective his theory was incoherent with much that was generally known.Our analysis uses a new theory of explanatory coherence that has already been applied to several important cases in the history of science: Lavoisier’s argument for his oxygen theory against the phlogiston theory, Darwin’s argument for the theory of evolution by natural selection, and current disputes about why dinosaurs became extinct (Thagard 1988b). This theory is implemented in a connectionist computer program called ECHO that takes statements of explanatory relations as input and creates a network of units, crudely analogous to neurons, with excitatory and inhibitory links among them.