Abstract

A proposal is made concerning the introduction of the notions of cause and reason into a natural language understanding system. Its hypothesis is that one should prefer rational explanations of actions when dealing with human, or human‐like, agents, if one can find them in what one is analyzing, but that in other, nonhuman, cases one should prefer causal explanations. The reader is reminded of the existing state of the preference semantics system, and then are described the changes that would have to be made to incorporate the above proposal and to find examples to test it. Finally, it is argued that there is no reason to think that a more complex taxonomy of causes (beyond the opposition of causes and reasons) is required, at least not if, as here. one seeks a procedural distinction corresponding to any taxonomic distinction among inference rules.