The paper investigates learning functions for first order languages. Several types of convergence and identification in the limit are defined. Positive and negative results on learning problems are presented throughout the paper.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Inductive Logic Programming, ILP-96, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1996. The 21 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book in revised version. Also included is the invited contribution "Inductive logic programming for natural language processing" by Raymond J. Mooney. Among the topics covered are natural language learning, drug design, NMR and ECG analysis, glaucoma diagnosis, efficiency measures for implementations and database (...) interaction, program synthesis, proof encoding and learning in the absence of negative data, and least generalizations under implication ordering. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent an approach to human knowledge that has had a profound influence on many recent thinkers. Popper breaks with a traditional commonsense theory of knowledge that can be traced back to Aristotle. A realist and fallibilist, he argues closely and in simple language that scientific knowledge, once stated in human language, is no longer part of ourselves but a separate entity that grows through critical selection.

This book is devoted to a different proposal--that the logical structure of the scientist's method should guarantee eventual arrival at the truth given the scientist's background assumptions.