Generalized subsumption

W. Buntine. Generalized subsumption and its applications to induction and redundancy. Artificial Intelligence 36(2) 149-176, Sep. 1988. 

The claim that the needs and means of production "coerce" the relations of production into the capitalist mould remains obscure. It certainly cannot mean that capitalism is necessary for the further development of the productive forces. This, while no doubt part of Marx s view, does not enter into his explanation of the rise of capitalism - except at the level of general theory, as in the 1859 Preface. In the more detailed discussions of the emergence of capitalism, he argues that the real subsumption of labour under capital, with the concomitant development of the productive forces, was a mere, non-explanatory by-product of the process. Later, I suggest an interpretation of the first part of the passage, where Marx says that the introduction of capitalism is possible only at a certain level of social production. Here I emphasize the latter part, which leaves little doubt that the emergence of capitalist relations occurred prior to, and independently of, the development of the productive forces. 

A program (hypothesis) is a finite set of definite clauses. The program search space is ordered by a clause subsumption relation, a particular case of generalization and an extension of Plotkin s 0-subsumption. This allows intelligent pruning of the search space, and thus an improvement over basic identification-by-enumeration ... 

The concept of 0-subsumption was picked up again by [Shapiro 82], who only considers definite clauses. His search for hypotheses goes from general-to-specific. 

Figure 5 The bond feature descriptions can be manipulated by a variety of rules, such as subsumption and generalization. This eliminates redundancy...

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