CS323 - Formalizing Common Sense - Nonmonotonic Reasoning

Previous years: 1996

Present year: Winter 1997.

Gates 259, 1:15-2:30 Tuesday and Thursday.

Professor: John McCarthy 723-4430 (jmc@cs.stanford.edu). Office 208 Gates. Phone for an appointment.

TA: Eyal Amir 725-1433 (eyala@cs.stanford.edu). Office: 218 Gates. Office hours/Review Sessions: Monday 10am-noon.

Secretary: Terry Rodriguez (tlr@cs.stanford.edu). Office: 203 Gates. Phone: 723-6321.

The course focuses on the following topics: systems of nonmonotonic reasoning emphasizing circumscription, applications to formalizing common sense knowledge and reasoning, situation calculus and its variants, formalizing context, and formalizing facts about knowledge.

We will assign 4 homeworks throughout the quarter and possibly a short paper at the end. There will be no final or any other tests. All the assignments, updates, and other relevant information will be added to this page. There is also an attached page on the students taking the course.

Readings: we require the book by John McCarthy, Formalizing Common Sense, Ablex 1990, which is available at the bookstore. We have prepared a Syllabus and Course Reader(postscript) which contains other relevant papers in electronic form. Sections of lecture notes from the previous years might also be of interest; these too are available in electronic form. McCarthy's home page contains a number of papers on logical AI, both published and unpublished.

Readings for next class.

The papers from the 1996 January symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning relate to the subject matter of this course. They are accessible from the Formal Reasoning Group home page.

Here is a preliminary version of some FORMULAS FOR THE BLOCKS WORLD.

The number of hits on this page since 1996 Dec 13.

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