The Case for Circularities in Case-Based Reasoning

In this paper, we demonstrate that diverse CBR research contexts share a common thread, in that their origin can be traced to the problem of circularity. An example is where the knowledge of property Lambda requires us to know property B, but B, in turn, is not known unless A is determined. We examine the root cause of such circularities and present fundamental impossibility results in this context. We show how a systematic study of circularity can motivate the quest for novel CBR paradigms and lead to novel approaches that address circularities in traditional CBR retrieval, adaptation, and maintenance tasks. Furthermore, such an analysis can help in extending the solution of one problem to solve an apparently unrelated problem, once we discover the commonality they share deep down in terms of the circularities they address.