Explanations and Case-Based Reasoning: Foundational Issues

By design, Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) systems do not need deep general knowledge. In contrast to (rule-based) expert systems, CBR systems can already be used with just some initial knowledge. Further knowledge can then be added manually or learned over time. CBR systems are not addressing a special group of users. Expert systems, on the other hand, are intended to solve problems similar to human experts. Because of the complexity and difficulty of building and using expert systems, research in this area addressed generating explanations right from the beginning. But for knowledge-intensive CBR applications, the demand for explanations is also growing. This paper is a first pass on examining issues concerning explanations produced by CBR systems from the knowledge containers perspective. It discusses what naturally can be explained by each of the four knowledge containers (vocabulary, similarity measures, adaptation knowledge, and case base) in relation to scientific, conceptual, and cognitive explanations.