Prepositional attitudes: Fregean representation and simulative reasoning
Lewis G. Creary · International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 1979
This paper describes briefly a general notation that has been constructed for representing information about propositions! attitudes, and a method that is being developed for using this notation to reason about such Information. The notation is Fregean in spirit, and is based on McCarthy's first-order theory of individual concepts and propositions, extended to permit adequate representation of Iterated propositional attitudes, and with a semantically simpler representation of quantified propositions and definite-description concepts of Individuals. The notation provides a systematic and Intuitively motivated way of dealing with apparent failures of extensionality and quantification into Intentional constructions. The reasoning method is knowledge-based, and uses a program's own ordinary inferential apparatus to simulate the reasoning of other intelligent organisms. The method thus avoids any need for redundant re-representation of Information about propositions at higher levels in the hierarchy of concepts, and provides a natural approach to making realistic inferences about the propositions! attitudes of others.