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Colonel Robert Simpson
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
IPTO
1400 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA  22209

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Dear Colonel Simpson:

	Enclosed is an informal draft of the proposal for the continuation
of my group's basic research in AI and formal reasoning.  We have
also included the work of Yoav Shoham, who is now completing a
thesis under Drew McDermott at Yale and who will join the
Stanford Computer Science Department in April 1987.
I am very optimistic about our new results in applying non-monotonic
reasoning to formalizing common sense knowledge and reasoning,
especially because the subject is now developed enough to attract
people trained in mathematical logic.  Also the formalization has
advanced far enough so that a prototype general purpose database
of common sense knowledge is a realistic research goal.

	Vladimir Lifschitz and I will be glad to visit DARPA when
this is appropriate.  In particular, we would like to be able to
tell you and Saul Amarel about our plans.

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Sincerely,       

John McCarthy    
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