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C00002 00002	%positi[e88,jmc]		Position paper on AI and philosophical logic
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C00006 00004	\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ \number\year\ by John McCarthy}
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%positi[e88,jmc]		Position paper on AI and philosophical logic
\input memo.tex[let,jmc]
\title{Artificial Intelligence and Philosophical Logic}
\section{Positions}

1. One promising approach to artificial intelligence is to represent
common sense knowledge of the world in mathematical logical sentences
and have the computer program use logical reasoning to decide what
action is appropriate for achieving its goals.

2. Common sense knowledge and reasoning are the key rather than the
representation of existing scientific theories.  This is because
scientific knowledge is necessarily imbedded in common sense knowledge.

3. The common sense {\it informatic situation} is characterized by
incomplete knowledge and openness as to what knowledge is relevant
to achieving goals.

4. The required openness requires that logical deduction be supplemented
by formalized nonmonotonic reasoning.

A key research problem is the design of a formalism appropriate for
representing a general common sense knowledge base that can be used
by any reasoning program regardless of why the particular program
needs to know about the particular domain.

Formalisms must be {\it epistemologically adequate}, i.e. they must
be capable of representing the facts that are actually available
to systems with the usual abilities to observe the common sense
world.


There is no ultimate common sense database.  It will always be capable
of further refinement.
Therefore, formalisms must be elaboration tolerant, i.e. the should not have
to be scrapped whenever a new phenomenon is to be taken into account.
\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ \number\year\ by John McCarthy}
\smallskip\noindent{This draft of \jobname\ TEXed on \jmcdate\ at \theTime}
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