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.cb Four Lectures on the Formalization of Common Sense Knowledge
.<<lectur[f83,jmc]>>

John McCarthy will give four lectures on the formalization of common
sense knowledge.

The lectures will be on Fridays at 3pm.
The first will be on Friday January 20 and will be held
in the conference room of the Center for Studies
in Linguistics and Information (CSLI) conference room in Ventura
Hall at Stanford.

1. The "situation calculus".  Expression of the facts about the
effects of actions and other events in terms of a function
result(e,s)  giving the new situation that arises when the
event  e  occurs in the situation  s.  The frame and qualification
problems.  Advantages and disadvantages of various reifications.

2. The circumscription mode of non-monotonic reasoning.
Mathematical properties and problems of circumscription.
Applications of circumscription to formalizing common sense
facts.  Application to the frame problem, the qualification
problem and to the STRIPS assumption.

3. Formalization of knowledge and belief.  Modal and first order
formalisms.  Formalisms in which possible worlds are explicit
objects.  Concepts and propositions as objects in theories.

4. Philosophical conclusions arising from AI work.  Approximate
theories, second order definitions of concepts, ascription of
mental qualities to machines.

	The treatments given in the lectures are new, but the material
is related to the following papers.

%3McCarthy, John and P.J. Hayes (1969)%1:  "Some Philosophical Problems from
the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence", in D. Michie (ed), %2Machine
Intelligence 4%1, American Elsevier, New York, NY.

%3McCarthy, John (1980)%1: 
"Circumscription - A Form of Non-Monotonic Reasoning", %2Artificial
Intelligence%1, Volume 13, Numbers 1,2, April.
.<<aim 334, circum.new[s79,jmc]>>

%3McCarthy, John (1977)%1:
"On The Model Theory of Knowledge" (with M. Sato, S. Igarashi, and
T. Hayashi), %2Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference
on Artificial Intelligence%1, M.I.T., Cambridge, Mass.

%3McCarthy, John (1979)%1: 
"First Order Theories of Individual Concepts and Propositions", 
in Michie, Donald (ed.) %2Machine Intelligence 9%1, (University of
Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh).
.<<aim 325,concep[e76,jmc]>>

%3McCarthy, John (1979)%1:
"Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines" in %2Philosophical Perspectives 
in Artificial Intelligence%1, Ringle, Martin (ed.), Harvester Press, July 1979.
.<<aim 326, MENTAL[F76,JMC]>>