Heuristics, justification, and defeasible reasoning

Heuristics can be regarded as justifying the actions and beliefs of problem-solving agents. I use an analysis of heuristics to argue that a symbiotic relationship exists between traditional epistemology and contemporary artificial intelligence. On one hand, the study of models of problem-solving agents using quantitative heuristics, for example computer programs, can reveal insight into the understanding of human patterns of epistemic justification by evaluating these models' performance against human problem-solving. On the other hand, qualitative heuristics embody the justifying ability of defeasible rules, the understanding of which is provided by traditional epistemology.