This paper descries D-SCRIPT, a language for representing knowledge in artificial intelligence programs. D-SCRIPT contains a powerful formalism for descriptions, which permits the representation of statements that are problematical for other systems. Particular attention is paid to problems of opaque…

The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory proposes to continue its work on a group of closely interconnected projects, all bearing on questions about how to make computers able to use more sophisticated kinds of knowledge to solve difficult problems. This proposal explains…

The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory proposes to continue its work on a group of closely interconnected projects, all bearing on questions about how to make computers able to use more sophisticated kinds of knowledge to solve difficult problems. This proposal explains…

The goal of the Programmer's Apprentice project is to develop a theory of how expert programmers analyze, synthesize, modify, explain, specify, verify, and document programs. This research goal overlaps both artificial intelligence and software engineering. From the viewpoint of artificial…

The typical subroutines that compute $\\sin(x)$ and $\\exp(x)$ bear little resemblance to our mathematical knowledge of these functions: they are composed of concrete arithmetic expressions that include many mysterious numerical constants. Instead of programming these subroutines conventionally, we can express…

The construction of expert problem-solving systems requires the development of techniques for using modular representations of knowledge without encountering combinatorial explosions in the solution effort. This report describes an approach to dealing with this problem based on making some knowledge…

This paper introduces a model of spatial cognition to describe the states of partial knowledge that people have about the spatial structure of a large-scale environment. Spatial knowledge has several different representations, each of which captures one aspect of the…

Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay…

We propose a vision of the structure of knowledge and processes of learning based upon the particularity of experience. Highly specific cognitive structures are constructed through activities in limited domains of experience. For new domains, new cognitive structures develop from…

The computational metaphor which proposes the comparison of processes of mind to realizable or imaginable computer activities suggests a number of educational concerns. This paper discusses some of those concerns including procedural modes of knowledge representation and control knowledge ??owing…