Inference on the low level. An investigation into deduction, nonmonotonic reasoning, and the philosophy of cognition (Q2487868)

By inference `on the low level', the author means drawing conclusions without attention to the reasons or arguments that might be given to justify them. The low-level agent is not conscious of patterns or principles of justification, and may even be not be aware that it is drawing conclusions. Such behaviour is manifested not only by humans, but also by many other members of the animal kingdom. The author contrasts it with inference `on the high level', in which the agent pays conscious attention to the justifications and component steps of the inference. The book presents itself as a philosophical study of the nature of such low-level inferences. It is divided into four main parts, plus appendices. Part I seeks to `give a general explication of the notion of inference' whether of high or low level; it sees itself as proceeding `exclusively in causal, system-theoretic terms, without any normative component'. In Part II the author argues that whereas the concepts used to study high-level inferences may be `internalist', those for investigating low-level ones must be `externalist'. Part III reviews some of the logical tools that may be used to study low-level inferences, notably classical logic, probabilistic logics, and qualitative logics for uncertain reasoning (or as the author calls them, logics of `normic conditionals'). Part IV looks at the question of what sorts of mechanisms might be at play in an agent to permit it to carry out low-level inferences; it is argued that they can be effected by `a cognitive architecture that is based on a simple qualitative neural network where nonmonotonicity is implemented by inhibition mechanisms'. The volume is based on the author's doctoral thesis at the University of Salzburg in 2001, and bears stylistic traces of its origin as a dissertation.