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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 030
AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 30
Today's Topics:
Network Lists - New Software Engineering List,
Seminars - Automated Ada Programming using Icons and Prolog (SU) &
INTERNIST Scoring Schemes (SU) &
Modelling Discourse Structure (UCB) &
Semantic Prototyping System (Boston SICPLAN) &
Language Comprehension (UCF) &
A Reductionist Semantics (UCB) &
Motivation Analysis (UCF) &
Intuitionistic Logic (CMU) &
Domains and Intuitionistic Logic (CMU),
Conference - Evolution, Games, and Learning
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 26 Feb 85 10:40:42-EST
From: Mark S. Day <MDAY@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Subject: New Soft-Eng List
SOFT-ENG@MIT-XX
Soft-Eng is a list for discussion of software engineering and related topics,
covering such areas as:
Requirements Specification Design
Testing Maintenance Enhancement
Languages Methodologies Tools
Verification Validation Reliability
Debugging Testing Testing Tools
Error handling Recovery Programming Environments
Modelling Documentation Extensibility
Practices Standards Protection mechanisms
Portability Complexity Performance
Software science Management Cost estimation
Productivity Rapid prototyping Reusable software
Professional ethics Configuration mgmt. Quality assurance
Staffing Systems analysis Training & education
Human factors Software: legal issues Real-time systems
Hardware/software tradeoffs Software fault-tolerance
Any and all contributions are welcome (e.g. questions, ideas, "war stories",
proposals, humor, abstracts, conference reports, bibliographies, problems,
reviews, tutorials, solutions, planned or completed projects).
The list is currently unmoderated, but may become a digest if the volume of
mail warrants it.
All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems, questions,
etc., should be sent to Soft-Eng-Request@MIT-XX.
[Rather than compete with this list, I shall no longer forward items
about programming languages, environments, man-machine interfaces, etc.,
unless they relate specifically to AI and information science. LISP
and PROLOG articles will still be carried in AIList, of course. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: 22 Feb 85 0933 PST
From: Rosemary Brock <RBA@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Automated Ada Programming using Icons and Prolog (SU)
[Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
TITLE: "CAEDE - Carleton Embedded System Design Environment - An
Experimental Design Environment for Ada Using Icons and Prolog"
SPEAKER: Professor Ray Buhr
Department of Systems and Computer Engineering
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
PLACE: ERL 401, Monday Feb. 25th, 2:30 pm.
This informal talk will provide an overview of CAEDE's approach, status
and capabilities. With CAEDE, multitasking design structures are entered
iconically on the screen of a SUN workstation, using a notation described
in the speaker's "System Design With Ada" book (PH, 1984). The structures
are automatically converted into Prolog facts. Prolog programs process
these facts to generate skeleton Ada programs and to perform structural
and temporal analysis of the designs represented by the facts. Temporal
analysis is based on Prolog descriptions of the temporal properties of the
Ada rendezvous and of the temporal behaviour of tasks. The talk will
describe the iconic interface and the nature of the Prolog representations
and tools. CAEDE is part of a research program at Carleton into
environments and tools for embedded real time systems, with particular
emphasis on communication protocol systems.
------------------------------
Date: Fri 1 Mar 85 11:46:00-PST
From: Alison Grant <GRANT@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - INTERNIST Scoring Schemes (SU)
[Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Medical Information Sciences Colloquium
Tuesday, March 5, 1985
Stanford University Medical Center
Room M-106
1:15 - 1:45 P.M.
Speaker: David Heckerman
Title: Probabilistic Interpretation of Two Ad Hoc Scoring Schemes
I will present a new formulation of Bayes' theorem with the usual
assumptions that evidence is conditionally independent and that
hypotheses are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Within this
formulation, I define a quantity called the Measure of Confirmation
(MC). I will show that MC's satisfy all the axioms of MYCIN's
certainty factors. I will also show that a quantity closely related
to MC behaves similarly to the weighting factors in the INTERNIST-1
scoring scheme. Thus, a probabilistic interpretation will be provided
for these two evidence combination schemes that have been labeled
ad hoc.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 85 16:03:04 pst
From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok)
Subject: Seminar - Modelling Discourse Structure (UCB)
BERKELEY LINGUISTICS LUNCHBAG COLLOQUIUM
DAY: Thursday March 7, 1985
TIME: 11 - 12:30
PLACE: 200 Bldg. T-4
SPEAKER: Dr. Livia Polanyi, English Department, University of Amsterdam;
BBN Laboratories
TITLE: ``Modelling Discourse Syntactic and Semantic Structure''
ABSTRACT: The ultimate goal of the research to be discussed is to characterize
the structural and semantic relationships obtaining among individual clauses in
natural discourse. In this talk,a formal linguistic model of discourse structure
will be sketched which is designed to account for the ability of language users
to assign proper semantic interpretations to clauses in naturally occurring
interactively constructed talk despite the interruptions, resumptions, repairs,
and other disfluencies which characterize performance.
------------------------------
Date: 5 Mar 1985 00:08:40-EST
From: psm@Mitre-Bedford
Subject: Seminar - Semantic Prototyping System (Boston SICPLAN)
Boston SICPLAN (Special Interest Committee on Programming Languages) is
a local affiliate of the ACM SIGPLAN group and vaguely associated with and
chartered by the Greater Boston area chapter of the ACM. It normally meets
once a month, usually on the first Thursday, almost always at 8 p.m., and
normally at either BBN or Intermetrics. Its talks are often of interest
to people working in the fields of programming languages and compilers,
environments, artificial intelligence, and data/knowledge base management.
[...]
ACM GREATER BOSTON CHAPTER SICPLAN
Thursday, March 7, 1985
8 P.M.
Intermetrics Atrium
733 Concord Ave., Cambridge
A Semantic Prototyping System
Mitchell Wand
Indiana University and Brandeis University
Denotational semantics seems to be a useful language for
specifying the behavior of programming languages. The talk will
describe a set of computer programs that Dr. Wand developed for
testing and exercising programming language specifications given
in this style. It will also give an introduction to the method
of denotational semantics and an overview of how these tools can
be used to construct rapid prototypes of programming languages.
Our March speaker, Mitch Wand, is one of the leading innovators
in applying formal methods to language design and the analysis of
programs and language systems. He is spending the year at
Brandeis University, on leave from the University of Indiana,
where he is a professor. [...]
Our group customarily meets for dinner at Joyce Chen's
restaurant, 390 Rindge Ave., Cambridge at 6:00 P.M. (just before
the meeting). If you wish to come, please call Carolyn Elson at
Intermetrics 661-1840 as early as possible so we can make the
appropriate dinner reservation.
Peter Mager
chairperson, Boston SICPLAN
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 18:31:45 est
From: "Robert C. Bethel" <bethel%ucf.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Seminar - Language Comprehension (UCF)
Date & Time: Tuesday - April 9, 1985 at 6pm.
Location : Computer Center II, Rm #103
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.
Speaker : Eugene Charniak
Subject : Language Comprehension from an
Artificial Intelligence Perspective
In the first half of this talk will review the work which has been done
on language comprehension within the Artificial Intelligence Community.
Despite the often heated controversy surrounding the area, there is,
in fact, agreement on what the basic model must look like. Furthermore
this model is not, except in retrospect, a completely obvious one.
Unfortunately, in retrospect the model is rather obvious, and offers
little real guidance for someone trying to build such a system.
In the second part of the lecture will suggest how the model should be
extended to answer some of the problems left open in the consensus version.
This will include issues such as the relative importance of syntax and
semantics, limits on inference, and the role of logic.
Robert C. Bethel
University of Central Florida
uucp: {duke,decvax,akgua}!ucf-cs!bethel
ARPA: bethel.ucf-cs@csnet.relay.CSNET
csnet: bethel@ucf.CSNET
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 17:54:05 pst
From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok)
Subject: Seminar - A Reductionist Semantics (UCB)
BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
Spring 1985
Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B
TIME: Tuesday, March 12, 11:00 - 12:30
PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center
(followed by)
DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4
SPEAKER: Ned Block, CSLI and MIT
TITLE: ``A Reductionist Semantics''
There are two quite different families of approaches to seman-
tics: REDUCTIONIST approaches attempt to characterize the
semantic in non-semantic terms NON-REDUCTIONIST approaches are
more concerned with relations among meaningS than with the
nature of meaning itself. The non-reductionist approaches are
the more familiar ones (eg, Montague, the model- theoretic
aspect of situation semantics, Davidson, Katz). The reduction-
ist approaches come in 4 major categories:
1. Theories that reduce meaning to the mental (This is what is
common to Grice and Searle). 2. Causal semantics--theories
that see semantic values as derived from causal chains leading
from the world to our words. (Field's combination of Kripke
and Tarski) 3. Indicator semantics--theories that see natural
and non-natural meaning as importantly similar. Their paradigm
of meaning is the way the rings on the tree stump represent the
age of the tree when cut down. (Dretske/Stampe) 4. Functional
role semantics--theories that see meaning in terms of the func-
tional role of linguistic expressions in thought, reasoning,
and planning, and in general in the way they mediate between
sensory inputs and behavioral outputs.
After sketching the difference between the reductionist and
non-reductionist approaches, I will focus on functional role
semantics, a view that has independently arisen in philosophy
(where its sources are Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use,
and pragmatism) and cognitive science (where it is known as
procedural semantics).
Instead of devoting the talk to trying to answer certain well
known criticisms of functionalist views, I will concentrate on
what one particular version of the doctrine can DO (if the cri-
ticisms can be answered): viz., illuminate acquisition of and
knowledge of meaning, principles of charity, how meaning is
relevant to explanation of behavior, the intrinsic/observer-
relative distinction, the relation between meaning and the
brain, and the relativity of meaning to representational sys-
tem. The point is to give a sense of the fertility and power
of the view, and so to provide a rationale for working on solu-
tions to its problems. Finally, I will sketch some reasons to
prefer functional role semantics to the other reductionist
theories.
A copy of a paper which the talk draws on will be in the cogni-
tive science library.
UPCOMING ELSEWHERE ON CAMPUS
Andy diSessa (Computer Science Lab at MIT) will be speaking on
``Knowledge in Pieces: Intuitive Knowledge in Physics and
Other Things'' at 4pm on Friday, March 8, in the Beach Room,
third floor, Tolman Hall.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 18:31:45 est
From: "Robert C. Bethel" <bethel%ucf.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Seminar - Motivation Analysis (UCF)
Date & Time: Wednesday - April 10, 1985 (time - to be announced on tuesday)
Location : Computer Center II, Rm #103
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.
Speaker : Eugene Charniak
Subject : Motivation Analysis, Abductive Unification,
and Non-monotonic Equality
Motivation analysis in story comprehension requires matching an action
mentioned in the story against actions which might be predicted by possible
explanitory motivations. This matching requires matching constants from
the story against skolem functions in the possible motivations (assuming a
normal first order representation of stories, plans, etc.). We will show
that extending unification to allow for unifying two things if they are
non-monotonically equal does exactly what is needed in such cases. We also
show that such a procedure allows for a clean method of noun-phrase reference
determination.
Robert C. Bethel
University of Central Florida
uucp: {duke,decvax,akgua}!ucf-cs!bethel
ARPA: bethel.ucf-cs@csnet.relay.CSNET
csnet: bethel@ucf.CSNET
------------------------------
Date: 5 Mar 1985 0903-EST
From: Lydia Defilippo <DEFILIPPO@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Intuitionistic Logic (CMU)
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Speaker: Dana Scott
Date: Wednesday, March 6
Time: 2:00
Place: 2105 DH
Topic: Intuitionistic logic and some models
Abstract: The lambda calculus as usually presented is an equational
theory, but it is also supposed to be a theory of functions. One
way to understand its scope is to discuss models for lambda
calculus in intuitionistic logic and to relate it to the notion of
function appropriate within that framework. However, this first
talk will be just about intuitionistic logic and some of its
interpretations.
------------------------------
Date: 5 Mar 1985 0904-EST
From: Lydia Defilippo <DEFILIPPO@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Domains and Intuitionistic Logic (CMU)
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Speaker: Dana Scott
Date: Monday, March 11
Time: 2:00
Place: 324 Scaife Hall
Topic: Domains and intuitionistic logic (I)
Abstract: Kleene's realizability interpretation in one very
explicit approach to intuitionistic logic. The basics of the
interpretation will be discussed, and it will be explained how
computability theory gets a logical form. In particular, the
effectively given domains become just sets (of a special kind).
Some results from McCarty and others on realizability will be
explained. The way domain models for lambda calculus behave from
this point of view will also be discussed.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 85 09:27:39 mst
From: bbw@LANL.ARPA (Burton Wendroff)
Subject: Conference - Evolution, Games, and Learning
[Forwarded by Golub@SU-SCORE and Buchanan@SUMEX-AIM.]
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
Title - EVOLUTION, GAMES, AND LEARNING: Adaptation in Machines and Nature
Date - May 20 - 24, 1985
Place - Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
Topics include - biological evolution, deterministic and random
automata, learning algorithms, neural networks, computer
game programs, game theory, allocation mechanisms,
and brain function.
Speakers include - J. ANDERSON, H. BERLINER, M. CONRAD, J. H. CONWAY,
J. D. COWAN, M. DAVIS, J. L. DENEUBOURG, M. W. FELDMAN, P. FREY, I. J. GOOD,
J. H. HOLLAND, J. HOPFIELD, B. HUBERMAN, S. KAUFFMAN, S. KIRKPATRICK,
N. PACKARD, S. REITER, G.-C. ROTA, A. SAMUEL, P. SCHUSTER, T. J. SEJNOWSKI,
J. MAYNARD SMITH, J. W. VALENTINE, L. G. VALIANT, S. WOLFRAM
Registration fee - $50
Contact - For registration information and forms write or call
Evolution, Games ,and Learning
Los Alamos National Laboratory
P. O. Box 1663, MS-B258
Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
Tel. 505-667-1444
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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