The Importance of Two Cognitive Mechanisms in Analyzing Counterfactuals: An Implementation-Oriented Explication 1

We aim at covering three facets of the problem of analyzing counterfactual conditionals: emphasizing that the problem is crucial for cognitive systems to consider, investigating the cognitive mechanisms responsible for reasonable analyses of counterfactuals, and proposing how to computationally contribute to solving the problem by cognitive systems. Aiming at an implementation-oriented explication, the challenges that an articial system may encounter in computationally solving this problem are discussed. The utilization of two particular computationally-plausible cognitive mechanisms is shown to be helpful in overcoming these challenges: we argue that the operational utilization of analogical mapping and conceptual blending is possible, and leads to reasonable analyses of counterfactual conditionals in articial cognitive systems.

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