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John McCarthy's Home Page
If you like frames try this [courtesy of Tim McCarthy ]. 2
new
What's new?
It occurs to me that those who have already looked at this web page might not want to slog through all of it on the chance that something newly installed might interest them. If you've looked at the page before, then look at this dated list. Dates start in 1995 July. I sometimes miss one or two.3
intro
INTRODUCTORY .
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My goal is get all my papers and many of my notes into a form reachable from this page.
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If any of the papers here are listed as references, I would be grateful if the URLs were given along with the printed references. Some are available only as Web documents and will remain that way. Please include them as references if you would reference a printed document with the same content.
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personal.html
About John McCarthy including addresses .
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progress/index.html
The Sustainability of Human Progress
Many people, including many scientists, mistakenly believe that human progress, in the form it has taken in the last few hundred years, is unsustainable. This page and its subsidiaries attempt summarize the scientific basis for technological optimism. There is also a section discussing related ideological phenomena and the advocacy politics which the ideology has given rise.
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http://www-formal.stanford.edu/
Up to: The Formal Reasoning Group which has links to the pages of my associates and students.
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/preprints/server.html
The FTP Directory
.tex, .dvi and .ps versions of some files are available there as well as TeX and LaTeX debris
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whatisai.html
What is Artificial Intelligence? contains non-technical answers to some frequently asked questions.
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proglang
PAPERS ON PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their Computation by Machine (Part I) . This was the original paper on LISP.It is copied with minor notational changes from CACM , April 1960. If you want the exact typography, look there. A few typographical changes have been made, but the notation has not been modernized. There are also some new explanatory footnotes. Part II, which never appeared, was to have had some Lisp programs for algebraic computation.
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elephant.html
Elephant 2000 - 1992
This unpublished draft is a proposal for a new programming language, but it includes the mathematical theory of computation proposal for distinguishing input-output and accomplishment specifications, characterizes input and output statements as speech acts and allows reference to the past in programs.
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pub_papers
PUBLISHED PAPERS ON MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COMPUTATION
A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation , first given in 1961, was published in 1963 in Computer Programming and Formal Systems , edited by P. Braffort and D. Hirschberg and published by North-Holland.15
towards.html
Towards a Mathematical Science of Computation , IFIPS 1962 extends the results of the previous paper.
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mcpain.html
Correctness of a Compiler for Arithmetic Expressions by John McCarthy and James Painter may have been the first proof of correctness of a compiler. Abstract syntax and Lisp-style recursive definitions kept the paper short.
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[more to come]
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pub_ai
PUBLISHED AI PAPERS
I concentrated on papers not included in my book Formalizing Common Sense , Ablex 1990, but some of the papers included in that book are now here.
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@Book{McC90,
author = "John McCarthy",
title = "Formalization of common sense, papers by {J}ohn
{M}c{C}arthy edited by {V}. {L}ifschitz",
publisher = "Ablex",
year = "1990",
}
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inversion.html
Inversion of Functions Defined by Turing Machines was included in Automata Studies edited by Claude Shannon and myself and published by Princeton University Press in 1956.
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mcc59.html
Programs with Common Sense was probably the first paper on logical AI, i.e. AI in which logic is the method of representing information in computer memory and not just the subject matter of the program. The paper was given in the Teddington Conference on the Mechanization of Thought Processes in December 1958 and printed in the proceedings of that conference.
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mcchay69.html
Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence by John McCarthy and Pat Hayes was published in 1969 in Machine Intelligence 4 . It is the basic paper on situation calculus.
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nut.html
My 1964 Stanford AI Memo A Tough Nut for Proof Procedures has aroused increased interest lately. The present version has some recent comments. It is to prove that a checkerboard with two diagonally opposite squares removed cannot be covered by dominoes that cover two adjacent squaress.
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checkerboard.html
The Mutilated Checkerboard in Set Theory was presented at the QED meeting in Warsaw in 1995 July. It is a proof in set theory that I think an interactive prover for heavy duty set theory should be able to accept. It uses for a different purpose the same problem as the previous paper.
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circumscription.html
Circumscription - A Form of Nonmonotonic Reasoning was published in Artificial Intelligence in 1980.
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applications.html
Applications of Circumscription to Formalizing Common Sense Knowledge was first published in Artificial Intelligence in 1986.
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ascribing.html
Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines concerns what it means for a machine to have beliefs. This started the dispute about whether thermostats could be considered to have beliefs. It was published in 1979 in an obscure collection and reprinted in my 1990 book Formalizing Common Sense .
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concepts.html
First Order Theories of Individual Concepts and Propositions was first published in Machine Intelligence 9 in 1979.
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ailogic.html
Artificial Intelligence, Logic and Formalizing Common Sense
in Philosophical Logic and Artificial Intelligence edited by Richmond Thomason (Dordrecht ; Kluwer Academic, c1989).
This contains a reasonably up-to-date (even as of 1994) point of view of logical AI. It doesn't cover what I don't know or have forgotten.
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context.html
Notes on Formalizing Context
Appeared in Proceedings of IJCAI - 1993. This version has an improvement in the way lifting above-theory is treated.
Notes on Formalizing Context.
Proc. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1993, pp. 555-560.
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mccarthy-buvac-98/index.html
Formalizing Context (Expanded Notes) contains expanded material on context. It is joint work with Sasa Buvac.
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aiphil.html
Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy was given at Aaron Sloman's Symposium on philosophy and AI at IJCAI-95. The present version is somewhat improved.
What Has AI in Common with Philosophy?.
Proc. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1995, pp. 2041-2042.
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logical.html
A LOGICAL AI APPROACH TO CONTEXT responds to a request for a note on our approach to formalizing context in mathematical logic that can be compared with John Perry's situation semantics based approach to context. It will appear in a CSLI (Center for Studies in Linguistics and Information) publication.
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robots
Making Robots Conscious of their Mental States was given at Machine Intelligence 15, 1995 August in Oxford. To appear in the Proceedings of that workshop. The idea is that many tasks will require the computer programs examine their own computational structures in ways like those involved in human consciousness and indeed self-consciousness.
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someneed.html
Some Expert Systems Need Common Sense was published in 1984. Some people are re-defining AI in such a way that common sense and therefore human level AI are precluded. They do this inadvertently (presumably) by assuming that some human limits what phenomena are to be taken into account in defining the AI system.
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coloring.html
Coloring Maps and the Kowalski Doctrine was a 1982 Stanford report. More is known about realizing the Kempe heuristic by making a Prolog that can run in an introspective mode, and I'll put in a note about it when I get a chance.
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little.html
The Little Thoughts of Thinking Machines is a popular article that appeared in Psychology Today in 1983.
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epistemological.html
Epistemological Problems of Artificial Intelligence summarized the epistemological problems I saw at that time. It was an invited talk at IJCAI-77. Many of the problems mentioned in this paper were treated later in more detail by myself and other people.
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generality.html
Generality in Artificial Intelligence relates to my ACM Turing Award lecture given in 1971. However, the ideas didn't jell sufficiently at that time to be written up. In 1987 ACM asked for a summary to include in a volume of Turing Award lectures. Instead I wrote this complete paper. Its actual relation to the 1971 lecture is hard to say.
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http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/model/
On the Model Theory of Knowledge by myself, M. Sato, T. Hayashi and S. Igarashi was written in the late 1970s.
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notes
Notes on AI
An Example for Natural Language Understanding and the AI Problems it Raises - 197642
puzzles.html
Formalization of two Puzzles Involving Knowledge involves formalization of facts about knowledge including both knowing what and knowing that , how to assume and prove non-knowledge, joint knowledge and the effect of learning a fact on the set of facts then known.
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zombie.html
Todd Moody's Zombies is an invited commentary that appeared in Volume 2, Issue 4 (1995) of the Journal of Consciousness Studies .
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whatisai.html
What is AI? is intended to answer questions I get in email from people uninformed about AI. Suggestions for improving it are welcome, and anyone who has a use for it is welcome to link to it or copy it.
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chess.html
Making Computer Chess a Drosophila for AI is an outgrowth of my review of Monty Newborn's Kasparov versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age . The review appeared in Science for 1997 June 6.
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roofs.html
Roofs and Boxes is an example to illustrate that extrapolating past experience to predict the future usually involves recognitions of phenomena in the world and not just the sequence of inputs.
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parameterize.html
Parameterizing the Set of Models of a Propositional Theory
It is often inadequate that a theory be consistent, i.e. have models. It should have enough models. We discuss parameterizing the set of models in the special case of propositional satisfiability.
OTHER COMPUTER SCIENCE
The Common Business Communication Language , published in 1975, proposes a language for inter-business inter-computer commmunication. The ideas in this paper have been re-invented in connection with electronic commerce.48
progress
AI PAPERS IN PROGRESS
The date given is when the paper was last revised.
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child1.html
The Well-Designed Child discusses the initial knowledge of the world that makes a baby more competent than a "Cartesian baby" would be.
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lemmings.html
Partial Formalizations and the Lemmings Game 1994 Nov
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narrative.dvi
Situation Calculus with Concurrent Events and Narrative - 1994
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concepts-ai.html
Concepts of Logical AI has a paragraph each about each of approximately 50 concepts.
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human.html
From Here to Human-level AI , 1996 August, was the basis of an invited talk at KR-96 in 1996 November.
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data-mining.html
Phenomenal Data Mining concerns finding relations between data and phenomena and not just relations within the data. There isn't much AI in the paper - yet, but the idea for phenomenal data mining has somewhat of a philosophical and AI origin.
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modality.html
Modality, si! Modal logic, no! argues that there are better ways, especially for AI, of treating modalities than any kind of modal logic.
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elaboration.html
Elaboration Tolerance discusses making logical representations of facts that can accept various kinds of modifications easily - best by the addition of sentences. - 1997 Sept 9, updated 1997 Dec 14
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history
HISTORY
Links to articles of historical interest59
links.html
Links to Work by Others
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reviews/reviews.html
BOOK REVIEW links
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file://sail.stanford.edu/pub/ai-research/basic.html
AI needs a basic research document
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editor
EDITORIAL PROJECTS
BASIC TOPICS IN EXPERIMENTAL COMPUTER SCIENCE is a start on a report on the above topic. POLITICSNot much here now. There will be more later.
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advocacy.html
ADVOCACY contains references to pages advocating something or other.
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essays.html
ESSAYS contains essays about various topics written from time to time. Some of them are supposed to be funny.
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archives.html
Electronic Archives
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ai.html
Here are some references to home pages of individuals and institutions concerned with AI. I'd be glad to have more references.
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facts.txt
Here is a Emacs Lisp file of mathematical, physical and astronomical facts that I prepared for my own use which I am making available by request. I have called it facts.txt, so that Netscape and competitors will treat it right. Xemacs and FSF Emacs would prefer it renamed to facts.el; then they will treat it right. The emacs lisps are subsets of Common Lisp, so it can be loaded into Common Lisp and used there.
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docdil.html
Here's a puzzle expressing my attitude towards many human problems. Look at THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
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html/sites.html
Here is a large collection of Web sites that I have developed over time. No special recommendations, and the classification is not as accurate as you might hope.
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http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/sts160/index.html
This page has the permanent URL: http://purl.oclc.org/NET/jmc/ . The theory is that if http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc has to be changed (which is not planned) then OCLC will redirect the reference to the new URL, assuming I have provided one.
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http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/cs323/index.html
CS323 - Formalization of Common Sense - Nonmonotonic Reasoning
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http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/cs193l/index.html
CS193L - Programming in Lisp
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hits
The number of hits on this page since 1995 October 17th.
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jmc@cs.stanford.edu