Author: SRI International

  • On McDermott’s First Critique

    The first question to be answered is, What is logicism?’ McDermott outlines the logicist position as follows…

  • Using Causal Rules In Planning

    Reasoning about actions necessarily involves tracking the truth of assertions about the world over time. The SIPE planning system retains the efficiency of the STRIPS assumption for this while enhancing expressive power by allowing the specification of a causal theory. Separation of knowledge about causality from knowledge about actions relieves operators of much of their…

  • Learning and Recognition In Natural Environments

    We present a system for learning descriptions of objects, and for subsequently recognizing learned objects, that functions in outdoor, natural environments.

  • Separating Linguistic Analyses From Linguistic Theories

    This paper explores the question of what level of linguistic practice is best suited for use in natural-language processing (NLP) efforts. In particular, I argue that because the goals and strategies of linguistic theory and NLP differ, linguistic theories and formalisms may be inappropriate for importation into NLP applications. The question of whether insights from…

  • Reasoning and Planning In Dynamic Domains: An Experiment With A Mobile Robot

    In this paper, the reasoning and planning capabilities of an autonomous mobile robot are described. The reasoning system that controls the robot is designed to exhibit the kind of behavior expected of a rational agent, and is endowed with the psychological attitudes of belief, desire, and intention. Because these attitudes are explicitly represented, they can…

  • A Prolog Technology Theorem Prover: Implementation By An Extended, Prolog Compiler

    A Prolog technology theorem prover (PTTP) is an extension of Prolog that is complete for the full first-order predicate calculus. It differs from Prolog in its use of unification with the occurs check for soundness, the model-elimination reduction rule that is added to Prolog inferences to make the inference system complete, and depth-first iterative-deepening search…

  • Grammars and Logics Of Partial Information

    This paper is an informal survey of models of grammatical categories in unification-based formalisms from computational linguistics and their relationship to current logic programming concepts. The basic notion of partiality in the informational content of grammatical categories is introduced, and specific automata-theoretic, denotational and logical models of partial information are outlined. The expression of disjunction,…

  • The Synthesis Of Digital Machines With Probable Epistemic Properties

    Researchers using epistemic logic as a formal framework for studying knowledge properties of artificial-intelligence (AI) systems often interpret the knowledge formula to mean that machine encodes in its state as a syntactic formula or can derive it inferentially. If is defined instead in terms of the correlation between the state of the machine and that…

  • Implicature and Definite Reference

    An account is given of the appropriateness conditions for definite reference, in terms of the operations of inference and implicature. It is shown how a number of problematic cases noticed by Hawkins can be explained in this framework. In addition, the use of unresolvable definite noun phrases as a literary device and definite noun phrases…

  • Many Agents Are Better Than One

    This paper aims to show how much of the frame problem can be alleviated by using domain models that allow for the simultaneous occurrence of actions and events. First, a generalized situation calculus is constructed for describing and reasoning about events in multiagent settings. Notions of independence and causality are then introduced and it is…

  • A Logical Approach To Reasoning By Analogy

    We analyze the logical form of the domain knowledge that grounds analogical inferences and generalizations from a single instance. The form of the assumptions which justify analogies is given schematically as the “determination rule”, so called because it expresses the relation of one set of variables determining the values of another set. The determination relation…

  • Stereo Matching By Hierarchical, Microcanonical Annealing

    An improved stochastic stereo-matching algorithm incorporates two substantial modifications to an earlier version: a new variation of simulated annealing.