clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke) (04/30/85)
ACTIVITIES FOR THE WEEK COMMENCING MAY 6, 1985
(SF = Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Road)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Tuesday, May 7, 3 pm, SF 1101
Dr. Wolfgang Bibel
Technische Universitat Munchen
Federal Republic of Germany
"The Connection Method and Plan Generation"
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Friday, May 10, 11 am, SF 1101
Matt Ginsberg
Stanford University
"Counterfactual Implication"
Abstract: Counterfactuals are a form of non-monotonic inference that
has been of long-term interest to philosophers. In this talk, I discuss
the problem of deriving counterfactual statements from a predicate cal-
culus database. and present a formal description of this derivation that
allows the encoding of some context-dependent information in the choice
of a sub-language of the logical language in which we are working. The
construction is formally identical to the "possible worlds" interpreta-
tion due to David Lewis.
A concrete example is given which uses counterfactual implication
for the purpose of diagnosing digital hardware, and the talk concludes
with a discussion of possible applications of counterfactuals elsewhere
in AI.