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C00002 00002	nonmon[e85,jmc]		Four page handout for CSLI summer school
C00003 00003	The AI attitude to the formalization of common sense
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nonmon[e85,jmc]		Four page handout for CSLI summer school

Notes:

the AI attitude or at least my AI attitude

forms of non-monotonic reasoning

circumscription

1. The formula and its derivation

2. applications on non-monotonic reasoning

3. examples

4. simple abnormality theories

5. Prioritized circumscription

The AI attitude to the formalization of common sense

	In this lecture non-monotonic reasoning will be treated as
auxiliary to the problem of formalizing and using common sense
knowledge.   Problems of common sense knowledge also arise in linguistics
and philosophy, but AI has a different attitude.  In my opinion
the AI attitude to these problems should be adopted also by linguists
and philosophers.

	Linguists and philosophers tend to treat concepts, e.g. actions,
common nouns and propositions, as {\it natural kinds} whose properties
are to be discovered.  AI treats them as tools, i.e. to be given whatever
properties are most useful.  Present AI tends to be ad hoc, i.e. the
entities are given properties useful in a narrow problem domain, but
the project of making a common sense data base must give them the properties
that will be useful to any program that needs general knowledge of the
common sense world.