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moscow[e86,jmc]	Moscow conference

From JSL, June 1986, p. 512

	The Eighth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and
Philosophy of Science will be held in Moscow, August 17-22, 1987.
The chairman of the Program Committee is Professor J. E. Fenstad,
of Norway; the chairman of the Soviet Organizing Committee is
Professor I. T. Frolov, Volkhonka 14, Moscow 119842, USSR.  The
deadline for submission of abstracts is November 1, 1986; for
details on the required format of abstracts, and for any other 
information on the Congress, please write to Professor Frolov
at the above address.

Prof. Jens Erik Fenstad
Mathematics Institute
University of Oslo
PB. 1053-Blindern
Oslo 3
Norway

Here is the announcement of the Moscow conference.  I wouldn't have
discussed it with Bukovsky before discussing with you, but I wanted
to be sure to catch him before he left for England.  He told me that
you were in favor of giving a paper.  It could either be separate
or joint with me.  I also called Suppes and asked him whether a
paper by us on non-monotonic reasoning would be scientifically
appropriate for the conference - before mentioning possible
complications - and he said it would.  I think this will be the
reaction of other logicians and philosophers.  Did you meet Fenstad
at Stanford, and have you met Frolov?  Let's talk about it tomorrow.

secretary of division, Risto Hilpinen,
sec gen. int. union history and phil. sci
Dept. of Philosophy
University of Turku
SF-20500 Turku
Finland

Sept. 2, discussed problem with Minker

aaas 202 326-6400, talked to Carey who will "try to get a weather report on it".
a314  2101  31 Aug 86
AM-Archaeology,0501
South Africa Barred From Meeting Of Archaeologists
By GRAHAM HEATHCOTE
Associated Press Writer
    SOUTHAMPTON, England (AP) - About 1,000 archaeologists from 100
countries gathered Sunday for a world conference that has been
tangled in a political dispute over the banning of South African
scientists.
    The Southampton City Council, which is helping finance the World
Archaeological Congress, supported opponents of South Africa's racial
separation policies who had threatened to disrupt the proceedings if
South Africans attended.
    When invitations to the South African archaeologists were canceled,
more than 400 people who had planned to participate withdrew. And
several agencies that had been expected to help pay the expenses of
some Third World participants dropped those plans.
    The governing body of world archaeology, the International Union of
Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, based in Ghent, Belgium,
declared the ban an interference with its constitution protecting
academic freedom.
    The union, which sponsored the first 10 archaeological congresses,
disowned the Southampton conference. It passed the 11th congress
title to a meeting it is organizing in Mainz, West Germany, for
September next year with South Africans to be invited.
    But the Southampton meeting will open on schedule Monday, said Peter
Ucko, professor of archaeology at Southampton University on England's
south coast.
    Ucko, a specialist in prehistoric studies and Australia's
aborigines, spent three years organizing the congress that is to run
for six days. It is the first to be held in Britain since
archaeologists began holding international meetings more than 50
years ago.
    ''There was a lot of hysteria in the academic world about our
banning South Africans and we have lost about 100,000 pounds
($150,000) in sponsoring, mainly from the United States,'' said Ucko.
    ''The congress is costing about 500,000 pounds ($750,000),'' he
said. ''It is the Third World which will be hit worst as we have had
to reduce the money for grants to their participants to enable them
to come.''
    Ucko said the congress lost money pledged by two prominent U.S.
organizations, the National Science Foundation and the Wenner Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, ''but the Ford Foundation
didn't exercise a boycott.''
    There is strong representation at the congress from the Soviet
Union, China and other communist countries.
    Ucko said about 420 participants had withdrawn because of the ban
and 480 who had said they would come had canceled, saying they
couldn't afford it.
    Most of the cancellations over the ban came from the United States,
Britain, Israel, France, Spain and Italy, Ucko said.
    Ucko said the congress will be the first to break with the past
emphasis on ''digging things up'' and show instead that the science
is concerned with any information about any time in the past.
    ''Archaeology is changing and many of us now see excavation as
destruction,'' he said. ''We are interested now in living people as
well, because we can read in their actions how the people of the past
left stuff behind.''
    
AP-NY-08-31-86 2358EDT
***************

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In re Moscow meeting.

\disleft 15pt:{1.}:
What earlier international scientific meetings will there be in the
Soviet Union. Look in Science.

\disleft 15pt:{2.}:
Find out about Israeli and emigr\'e desires of attending the earlier
meetings. Rabin.

\disleft 15pt:{3.}:
Is Gurevich a US citizen?

\disleft 15pt:{4.}:
When was Gurevich letter?

\disleft 15pt:{5.}:
Find someone else who has applied for materials. bboard message.

\disleft 15pt:{6.}:
Ask Vicki for exact dates of Tallsin meeting. Also to look for would-
be attendees. If necessary, instigate one.  I'll raise the Intourist cancellation 
fee if a visa is granted and the person doesn't want to go. Person use only Israeli 
passport.

\disleft 15pt:{7.}:
What use can be made of the fact that Raisea Gorbachev is a ``philosopher''?
Is she already involved?

\disleft 15pt:{8.}:
Keep some reporters for Science, Nature and the NYT informed. An early article
mentioning the problem might be desirable.

\disleft 15pt:{9.}:
Is there a good guy in the State Department? NAS?

We don't know whether short or long abstracts are appropriate.  Here's a short one.
Pat Suppes thinks it's appropriate.

Non-monotonic Reasoning and the Formalization of Common Sense Knowledge.

V. Lifschitz and J. McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94043

Success in artificial intelligence (AI) requires conputers to represent common 
sense knowledge and do commmon sense reasoning. Mathematical Logic seems to
provide good formalisms for expressing the knowledge, but common sense 
reasoning often violates the monotonicity property of ordinary logic.\break
\hbox{$(If\ A\vdash P \ and\ ABC,\ then\ B\vdash P)$.}
 Since the 1970's formalized non-
monotonic reasoning has been developed, and we have used a formalism called
{\it circumscription\/} to express facts about common sense causality
and the effects of actions. As soon as we attempt to express general
common sense knowledge non-monotonicity is needed in the reasoning. Moreover,
causality takes a natural form that offers an explanation for the difficulties
in treating it in monotonic ligic, whether formal or not.  The paper contains
sets of exioms covering certain common sense phenomena, an explanation of the
need for {\it causes\/} as predicate and examples of application of the
axioms.
\vskip 1cm
\tabskip=0pt
\halign{#\hfil&#\hskip 1cm&#\hfil\cr
References:\cr
Circumscription&&	JMC\cr
Application of Circumscription&&	JMC\cr
IJCAI 85&&		VAL\cr
AAAI 86&&		VAL\cr
}
\bye
Attendance of Dr. Semeon Kheifets at a conference in the Soviet Union

Dr. Semeon Kheifets of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), a
former Soviet citizen, took part in the last International Conference on
High Energy Accelerators which took place in Novosibirsk,USSR, August
7-11, 1986. These conferences are held once every 3 years, the locations
alternate between America, Europe and the Soviet Union. The last one was
organized by the Institute for Nuclear Physics which has close contacts
with SLAC and considers them important. Kheifets's name was included by
SLAC in the list of the delegation, along with about 10 others. He was
told unofficially by a Soviet colleague that his visit would be
undesirable. However, he received later a personal invitation from the
Soviet Organizing Committee, like the other delegates. (Without such an
invitation, the Soviet Consulate doesn't accept visa applications). After
that, SLAC sent a telegram to the Organizing Committee with the list of
persons who intended to accompany the delegates; the list included
Kheifets's wife and grandson.

The other delegates were told that their visas were ready; Kheifets was told
that his relatives wouldn't be given visas, and there was no reply concerning
himself. The time of the conference was approaching, SLAC sent angry
telegrams to the Organizing Committee, and some members of the delegation,
including the head of SLAC and Nobel Prize winner, Burton
 Richter, said they wouldn't come without Kheifets.
Eventually the Consulate agreed to give him a visa, but only for the duration
of the conference, not for the extra week he asked for. The Consulate people
have told him that it would have been easier if he didn't ask for that extra
week. He's not sure how essential the pressure was for his success.

The next step was to receive a voucher from Intourist. Only after that was he
supposed to receive his visa from the agent in SF who handles the relations
with Intourist. The voucher never came, and on the last day the agent agreed,
contrary to the rules, give the visa to Kheifets. As a result, Kheifets didn't
deal with Intourist at all during his trip, and all the arrangements for him
were made through the Organizing Committee.

He submitted a joint paper, but in the Proceedings his name was dropped
from the list of authors. Otherwise, there was no discrimination against him
during the conference. He believes his visit is the first of this kind and
hopes that it will be easier now, after the precedent.

So far as we know this is the first time that recent emigrant from
the Soviet Union has been permitted to visit that country --- even
to attend an international conference.
International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
International Council of Scientific Unions
unesco
President of the Division of Logic
woman at Nat. Acad. of Sci.
in charge of exchange program