Abstract
Ever since the publication of “Programs With Common Sense” by McCarthy, the problem of qualification has been a source of intense research and debate. While it is undoubtful that now the common sense research community knows a lot about default reasoning, non-monotonic logics, belief revision, multiple extensions, among related topics, it is undeniable that the problem of qualification remains unsolved.
In the present paper, the problem of qualification is reframed and a different approach to it is presented. It is here suggested that a more powerful instrument for quantification (instead of the universal quantifier) can circumvent some of the problems raised by the traditional approaches. From a commonsensical point of view, sentences like men are mortal, elephants are grey, and birds fly suggest a kind of “partial set inclusion” to which decreasing grades of epistemic entrenchment of a certain agent can be associated.
In order to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed approach, an exercise of belief revision, involving a mythical australian bird, named Tweety, which happens to be a flying ostrich, is presented.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bossu, G. & Siegel, P. (1985). Saturation, Non-monotonic Reasoning, and the Closed World Assumption. Artificial Intelligence 25: 13-63.
Custódio, L. & Pinto-Ferreira, C. (1995). Agreement: A Logical Approach to Approximate Reasoning, published in Lectures Notes on Artificial Intelligence (EPIA'95), Proceedings of the 7th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence (EPIA'95). Springer-Verlag.
Gardenfors, P. (1988). Knowledge in Flux: Modeling the Dynamics of Epistemic States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hanks, S. & McDermott, D. (1986). Default Reasoning, Nonmonotonic Logics, and the Frame Problem. In Proc. Fifth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 328-333. Los Altos, CA: Morgn Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
Lifschitz, V. (1986). Formal Theories of Action: Preliminary Report. Working paper. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science.
Martins, J. & Shapiro, S. (1983). Reasoning in Multiple Belief Spaces. In Proc. Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 370-373. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
Martins J. & Shapiro, S. (1988). A Model for Belief Revision. Artificial Intelligence 35(1): 25-79.
McCarthy, J. (1958). Programs with Common Sense. In Mechanization of Thought Processes, Proc. of the Symposium of the National Physics Laboratory, 77-84. London, UK: Her Majesty's Stationary Office.
McCarthy, J. & Hayes, P. (1969). Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence. Machine Intelligence 4: 463-502.
McCarthy, J. (1997). Epistemological Problems of Artificial Intelligence. In Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1038-1044. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Phblishers, Inc.
McCarthy, J. (1980). Circumscription — A Form of Non-monotonic Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence 13(1): 27-39.
McCarthy, J. (1986). Applications of Circumscription of Formalizing Commonsense Knowledge. Artificial Intelligence 28(1): 89-116.
McDermott, D. & Doyle, J. (1980). Non-monotonic Logic I. Artificial Intelligence 13(1): 41-72.
Moore, R. (1988). Autoepistemic Logic. In Smets, Mamdani, Dubois & Prade (eds.) Non-Standard Logics for Automated Reasoning, 105-136. Academic Press.
Pinto-Ferreira, C. & Martins, J. (1989). Inscription — A Rule of Conjecture. In Proc. Forth Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 141-150. Heidelberg, W. Germany: Springer-Verlag. Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence 390.
Pinto-Ferreira, C. & Martins, J. (1990). A Formal System for Reasoning about Change. In Proc. Ninth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 503-508. London, UK: Pitman Publishing.
Pinto-Ferreira, C. & Martins, J. (1990). Planning in a Commonsense Framework. Artificial Intelligence Review 4: 279-294.
Pinto-Ferreira, C. & Martins, J. (1993). The Strict Assumption: A Propositional Approach to Change. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intellignece 5: 215-224.
Reiter, R. (1978). On Reasoning by Default. In Proc. Second Symposium on Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Procesing, 25-27.
Reither, R. (1980). A logic for Default Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence 13(1): 81-132.
Shafer, G. (1976). A Mathematical Theory of Evidence. Princeton University Press.
Shoham, Y. (1986). Chronological Ignorance: Time, Nonmonotonicity and Necessity. In Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 389-393. Morgan Kaufmann.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Custódio, L.M.M., Pinto-Ferreira, C. Many Birds Fly, Some Don't. Artificial Intelligence Review 13, 185–200 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006500215741
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006500215741