ylfink@water.UUCP (ylfink) (10/27/86)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
LOGIC PROGRAMMING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR
- Thursday, October 30, 1986.
Professor David L. Poole of this department will speak
on ``Automating Commonsense Reasoning: problems and
results in the Theorist project''.
TIME: 1:30 PM
ROOM: MC 5158
ABSTRACT
There have been various arguments throughout the last
few centuries on the applicability of logic for common-
sense reasoning. In this talk I will argue that many of
the problems traditionally associated with logic are
not problems with logic itself, but problems with how
logic is used. In this talk we will examine the conse-
quences of the assumption that reasoning should not be
deduction from a set of axioms, but rather theory for-
mation. Here logic is used to say what a theory
predicts, an inconsistency means that the theory cannot
be about our intended interpretation. The Theorist sys-
tem, based on the idea of theory formation from a fixed
set of possible hypotheses, will be shown to solve many
of the problems with other approaches to default rea-
soning and diagnosis. Problems, results, theorems and
algorithms will be presented.