[ont.events] U of T AI-systems seminar, Aug. 12

clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke) (08/06/85)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SYSTEMS SEMINAR

Monday, August 12, 11:00 am, Rm. SF1105

(SF = Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Road)

                              Dr. Joe Halpern
                       IBM Research Center, San Jose

                 Belief, Awareness, and Limited Reasoning


Abstract:       Classical possible-world models for knowledge and belief
suffer from the problem of logical omniscience: agents know all tautologies
and their knowledge is closed under logical consequence.  This unfortunate-
ly is not a very accurate account of how people operate!  We review
possible- worlds semantics, and then go on to introduce three approaches
towards solving the problem of logical omniscience.  In particular, in our
logics, the set of beliefs of an agent does not necessarily contain all
valid formulas.  One of our logics deals explicitly with awareness, where,
roughly speaking, it is necessary to be aware of a concept before one can
have beliefs about it, while another gives a model of local reasoning,
where an agent is viewed as a society of minds, each with its own cluster
of beliefs, which may contradict each other.  The talk will be completely
self-contained.
-- 
Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
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