Why this and not that? A Logic-based Framework for Contrastive Explanations

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08454v1
• Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:55:04 GMT
• Title: Why this and not that? A Logic-based Framework for Contrastive Explanations
• Authors: Tobias Geibinger, Reijo Jaakkola, Antti Kuusisto, Xinghan Liu, Miikka Vilander,
• Abstract summary: We define several canonical problems related to contrastive explanations, each answering a question of the form ''Why P but not Q?''<n>The problems compute causes for both P and Q, explicitly comparing their differences.<n>We show, inter alia, that our framework captures a cardinality-minimal version of existing contrastive explanations in the literature.
• Score: 4.3871352596331255
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: We define several canonical problems related to contrastive explanations, each answering a question of the form ''Why P but not Q?''. The problems compute causes for both P and Q, explicitly comparing their differences. We investigate the basic properties of our definitions in the setting of propositional logic. We show, inter alia, that our framework captures a cardinality-minimal version of existing contrastive explanations in the literature. Furthermore, we provide an extensive analysis of the computational complexities of the problems. We also implement the problems for CNF-formulas using answer set programming and present several examples demonstrating how they work in practice.

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