Upon successful completion of this course, the student:
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knows the main logical techniques for formalizing commonsense reasoning;
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knows the essence of dialogue models for argumentation;
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is able to apply these logical and dialogical formalisms to formal examples;
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has insight into the metatheoretic properties of the studied formalisms and can verify simple metatheoretic properties;
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is aware of the main formal relations between different logical models of commonsense reasoning, and can formally verify simple relations;
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is able to evaluate the suitability of the studied formalisms for modeling different types of commonsensereasoning and argumentation;
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is able to formalize realistic problems of commonsense reasoning in a logical system for commonsense reasoning.
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In commonsense reasoning, people are often faced with incomplete, uncertain or even inconsistent information. To deal with this, they use reasoning patterns where it can be rational to accept a conclusion even if its truth is not guaranteed by the available information. This course focuses on logics that systematise rationality criteria for such `defeasible' reasoning patterns. Logics of this kind are often called `nonmonotonic logics', since new information may invalidate previously drawn conclusions. This course covers some of the best-known nonmonotonic logics, in particular default logic, circumscription and argumentation systems, as well as formal theories of abductive reasoning. Attention is paid to the use of these formalisms in the specification of dynamic systems and in models of multi-agent interaction.
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