Bayesian nets are widely used in artificial intelligence as a calculus for casual reasoning, enabling machines to make predictions, perform diagnoses, take decisions and even to discover casual relationships. But many philosophers have criticized and ultimately rejected the central assumption on which such work is based-the causal Markov Condition. So should Bayesian nets be abandoned? What explains their success in artificial intelligence? This book argues that the Causal Markov Condition holds as a default rule: it often holds but may need to be repealed in the face of counter examples....

Objective Bayesianism is a methodological theory that is currently applied in statistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, physics and other sciences. This book develops the formal and philosophical foundations of the theory, at a level accessible to a graduate student with some familiarity with mathematical notation.Espeically suitable for graduate students or researchers in philosophy of sicence, foundations of statistics and artificial intelligence.

Logic is a field studied mainly by researchers and students of philosophy, mathematics and computing. Inductive logic seeks to determine the extent to which the premisses of an argument entail its conclusion, aiming to provide a theory of how one should reason in the face of uncertainty. It has applications to decision making and artificial intelligence, as well as how scientists should reason when not in possession of the full facts.
In this book, Jon Williamson embarks on a quest to find a general, reasonable, applicable inductive logic (GRAIL), all the while examining why pioneers such...