---
title: "Hypothetically Speaking Default Reasoning and Discourse-Structure"
authors:
  - "Andrew Csinger"
  - "David Poole"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1993/163"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1993/0163.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1993
pages: "1179-1184"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Hypothetically Speaking Default Reasoning and Discourse-Structure

Andrew Csinger, David Poole

*Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1179-1184.

## Abstract

We consider the problem of how to represent domain knowledge for user-modelling applications. The problem yields insight into methodology for representing knowledge in hypothetical reasoning systems. In general, there are not enough constraints in a domain to uniquely determine the approach that a reasoning system should take in formalizing its characteristics, but domain-independent methodological principles can help guide the designer. We present the shared information constraint on the domain of inter-agent communication, which implies an interesting representational duality between speakers (designers of utterances) and hearers ( recognizers of mental state) in a simple communication environment. This work provides insight into default reasoning applications development.