A connectionist model capable of performing rapid inferences to establish explanatory and referential coherence is described. The model's

Numerous observations have been made of apparent anomalies in carefully performed experimental studies of D/Pd and H/Pd systems. Such anomalies include: prompt emission of electrons and charged particles; unexplained heat in excess of known input sources; the residual presence of light elements (notably 3 H, 3 He and 4 He); the

solutions to overcome these problems. The solutions we propose center around the use of a different criterion, called explanatory coherence, as the primary measure to evaluate the quality of an explanation. In addition, explanatory coherence plays an important role in the construction of explanations, both

In his (1989) van Fraassen argues that Inference to the Best Explanation is incoherent in the sense that adopting it as a rule for belief change will make one susceptible to a dynamic Dutch book. The present paper argues against this. An epistemic strategy is described that allows us to infer

to the best explanation free of charge.

explanations. An architecture is proposed to combine explanation and prediction into one coherent framework. Algorithms used to implement the system as well as examples from a running implementation are given. Key words: defaults, conjectures, explanation, prediction, abduction, dialectics, logic

Existing approaches to text generation fail to consider how interactions with the user may be managed within a coherent explanation or description. This paper presents an approach to generating such interactive explanations based on two levels of discourse planning -- content planning and dialogue

The role of coherence in category-based explanation

This paper discusses the application of a previously reported theory of explanation rhetoric (Maybury, 1988b) to the task of explaining constraint violations in a hybrid rule/frame based system for resource allocation (Dawson et al, 1987). This research illustrates how discourse strategies

Existing approaches to text generation fail to consider how interactions with the user may be managed within a coherent explanation or description. This paper presents an approach to generating such interactive explanations based on two levels of discourse planning -- content planning and dialogue