On Preferring and Inspecting Abductive Models

This work proposes the application of preferences over abductive logic programs as an appealing declarative formalism to model choice situations. In particular, both a priori and a posteriori handling of preferences between abductive extensions of a theory are addressed as complementary and essential mechanisms in a broader framework for abductive reasoning. Furthermore, both of these choice mechanisms are combined with other formalisms for decision making, like economic decision theory, resulting in theories containing the best advantages from both qualitative and quantitative formalisms. Several examples are presented throughout to illustrate the enounced methodologies. These have been tested in our implementation, which we explain in detail.