Volume 17, No 1, Spring 2022 ISSN 1932-1066
On Reasoning, Commonsense Knowledge, and Consciousness
Ulrich Furbach
University of Koblenz, Germany
uli@uni-koblenz.de
Abstract: This essay addresses the application of formal logic to commonsense reasoning. To this end is depicted the integration of an automated reasoner based on predicate calculus with a method for statistical reasoning that is derived from word embeddings. This combination is motivated by the results from an experiment in the field of cognitive science involving human reasoning. Additionally, I briefly address its links to the Global Workspace Theory, which is currently considered to be one of the most prominent theories of consciousness.
Keywords: Jaspers, Karl; automated reasoning; human reasoning; Choice of Plausible Alternative challenge; Wason Selection Task; knowledge graph.
Formal logic has been the primary method for constructing symbolic problem-solving systems in artificial intelligence applications. Furthermore, artificial neural networks have also been utilized in order to design learning systems. This sub-symbolic approach has recently gained prominence due to the successful implementation of natural language processing systems such as the Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT).
In what follows I focus on symbolic AI specifically its subfield automated reasoning based on formal logic. I explore the application of automated reasoning systems to commonsense problems, which humans excel at solving when knowledge and context are involved. However, incorporating large amounts of background knowledge into a reasoning task presents challenges for an automated system as it needs to
Schriften, Sechste Reihe, Vierter Band 1677-Juni 1690, Teil A, eds. Heinrich Schepers, Martin Schneider, Gerhard Biller, Ursula Franke, and Herma Kliege-Biller, Berlin, DE: Akademie Verlag 1999, pp. 909-915, here p. 913, transl. Existenz editors.
Research regarding artificial intelligence (AI) has been a widely discussed topic since its inception at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956 that was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. At this conference, the name AI was coined in order to define a discipline concerned with figuring out how to get machines to use varieties of natural language and subsequently finding solutions to problems hitherto reserved for being solved by humans. Of course, in the past there have been scientists with similar goals, for example, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who worked on a logical calculus and a universal formal language in order to solve arguments or disputes. Leibniz writes:
Having done that when thus differences of opinion arise, there is no more need for discussion and dispute between two philosophers than there is such need between two mathematicians. For it suffices to take pens into the hand, to sit at the abacus and to tell each other (at once if it pleases the friend): Let us calculate.1
1 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, "De Arte Characteristica ad Perficiendas Scientias Ratione Nitentes," in Philosophische
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