Preferences and explanations

In abductive reasoning, preference criteria for selecting the best explanation are regarded as qualitative properties (like being simpler or more plausible) which are beyond the pure causal or deductive relationship between an explanandum and its explanations. This paper is a contribution to the clarification of the relationship between preference criteria and structural properties of explanatory reasoning. We present a detailed analysis of the connection between the logical properties satisfied by a logic-based explanatory process and the structural properties satisfied by the criterion used for selecting the preferred explanations. Namely, we characterize the postulates introduced in a previous work [Artificial Intelligence 111 (2) (1999) 131–169] as those satisfied by explanatory relations defined by preference relations over formulas. Several examples illustrating our results are analyzed, including well known preference criteria like expectation orders, preferential orders and other selection criteria that have appeared in the literature.  2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.