The Relevance of Irrelevance

Abstract

This research describes the formalization of statements of the form fact f is irrelevant to fact g given theory M. We motivate the need for representing and reasoning with such statements in problem-solving systems, and outline the semantics and properties of statements about irrelevance. We then describe a logic irrelevance that serves as a language for specifying irrelevance claims in the world, and present an associated calculus that allows us to draw new irrelevance conclusions from given ones. The utility of the formalization and the types of inferences it sanctions are demonstrated with examples from data interpretation, representation reformulation and experiment design.