John McCarthy's Home PageJohn McCarthy's Home PageMy goal is get all my papers and many of my notes into a form reachable from this page.
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.
About John McCarthy including addresses.
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.
Up to: The Formal Reasoning Group which has links to the pages of my associates and students.
The FTP Directory
.tex, .dvi and .ps versions of some files are available there as well
as TeX and LaTeX debris
What is Artificial Intelligence? contains non-technical answers to some frequently asked questions.
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.
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This unpublished draft is a proposal for a new programming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.
Towards a Mathematical Science of Computation, IFIPS 1962 extends the results of the previous paper.
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.
[more to come]
@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",
}
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Circumscription - A Form of Nonmonotonic Reasoning was published in Artificial Intelligence in 1980.
Applications of Circumscription to Formalizing Common Sense Knowledge was first published in Artificial Intelligence in 1986.
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.
First Order Theories of Individual Concepts and Propositions was first published in Machine Intelligence 9 in 1979.
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.
Notes on Formalizing Context
Appeared in Proceedings of IJCAI - 1993.
This version has an improvement in the way lifting above-theory
is treated.
Formalizing Context (Expanded Notes) contains expanded material on context. It is joint work with Sasa Buvac.
Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy was given at Aaron Sloman's Symposium on philosophy and AI at IJCAI-95. The present version is somewhat improved.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Little Thoughts of Thinking Machines is a popular article that appeared in Psychology Today in 1983.
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.
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.
On the Model Theory of Knowledge by myself, M. Sato, T. Hayashi and S. Igarashi was written in the late 1970s.
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.
Todd Moody's Zombies is an invited commentary that appeared in Volume 2, Issue 4 (1995) of the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Well-Designed Child discusses the initial knowledge of the world that makes a baby more competent than a "Cartesian baby" would be.
Partial Formalizations and the Lemmings Game 1994 Nov
Situation Calculus with Concurrent Events and Narrative - 1994
Concepts of Logical AI has a paragraph each about each of approximately 50 concepts.
From Here to Human-level AI, 1996 August, was the basis of an invited talk at KR-96 in 1996 November.
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.
Modality, si! Modal logic, no! argues that there are better ways, especially for AI, of treating modalities than any kind of modal logic.
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
AI needs a basic research document
ADVOCACY contains references to pages advocating something or other.
ESSAYS contains essays about various topics written from time to time. Some of them are supposed to be funny.
Here are some references to home pages of individuals and institutions concerned with AI. I'd be glad to have more references.
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.
Here's a puzzle expressing my attitude towards many human problems. Look at THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
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.
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.
Courses:
STS160 - Technological Opportunities for Humanity
CS323 - Formalization of Common Sense - Nonmonotonic Reasoning
The number of hits on this page since 1995 October 17th.
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