Title: Commonsense Reasoning about Containers using Radically Incomplete Information
Date: May 12 (Friday)
Time: 1:10pm-2pm
Place: Winslow 1st floor conference room
Abstract:
In physical reasoning, humans are often able to carry out useful reasoning based
on radically incomplete information. One physical domain that is ubiquitous both
in everyday interacctions and in many kinds of scientific applications, where
reasoning from incomplete information is very common, is the interaction of
containers and their contents. We have developed a preliminary knowledge base for
qualitative reasoning about containers, expressed in a first-order logic of time,
geometry, objects, histories, and actions. We have demonstrated that the knowledge
suffices to justify a number of commonsense physical inferences, based on very
incomplete knowledge. We have verified the validity of the inferences using the
SPASS theorem prover. (Joint work with Gary Marcus, Angelica Chen, and Noah
Frazier-Logue.)
Slides:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/davise/presentations/NWContainersTalk.pptx
Paper:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/davise/papers/ContainersCurrent.pdf