Default Reasoning

Abstract

The topic of default reasoning affords some instructive insights into the nature of the relationship between theoretical and practical reasoning. A default in logic is a fall-back position in point of conclusion drawing—one to which we can appropriately take resort when things go wrong. But, of course, things ought not to go wrong in logic. So what is going on here? Default reasoning is a matter of presumption—of how we can take matters to stand in the absence of good reasons to the contrary.