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C00002 00002	Here is the tentative announcement.  Note that I now propose to start
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Here is the tentative announcement.  Note that I now propose to start
on Friday the 13th and to give the third lecture at IBM.  This is
because I was already signed up with Joe Halpern for that date.  Does
all this look ok?  If so let me know, but don't use the text yet,
because I'll tinker with it a bit more.
.require "memo.pub[let,jmc]" source;
.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 2pm.
The dates are January 13, 20 and 27 and February 3.
The lectures will be in the conference room of the Center for Studies
in Linguistics and Information (CSLI) conference room in Ventura
Hall at Stanford, except for the third, which will be at the IBM Research
Laboratory in San Jose.

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.
Note that this lecture will be at the IBM Research Laboratory in
San Jose.

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]>>
If the audience seems receptive to it, I'll give a fifth lecture on
language based on CBCL and the idea that language study should
start with one word sentences - rather zero word sentences.
There is no natural language reasoning.

Lecture 1 - Situation calculus

AI and philosophy deal with many of the same issues.  However, AI
is more concened in the relations among the prototypical examples
of various concepts rather than the limits of definition of any one
concept.
Epistemological adequacy.  What do people and robots actually know
and how can that be represented?
Approximate theories.

situations and fluents, events
finitization, relation between situations and states.
Should we do the same with events?

Should I criticize Pat Hayes on the grounds that his histories are
not epistemologically adequate.  Maybe that's not my precise objection.