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Concept
Commonsense reasoning
Summary
In artificial intelligence (AI), commonsense reasoning is a human-like ability to make presumptions about the type and essence of ordinary situations humans encounter every day. These assumptions include judgments about the nature of physical objects, taxonomic properties, and peoples' intentions. A device that exhibits commonsense reasoning might be capable of drawing conclusions that are similar to humans' folk psychology (humans' innate ability to reason about people's behavior and intentions) and naive physics (humans' natural understanding of the physical world).
Some definitions and characterizations of common sense from different authors include:
"Commonsense knowledge includes the basic facts about events (including actions) and their effects, facts about knowledge and how it is obtained, facts about beliefs and desires. It also includes the basic facts about material objects and their properties."
"Commonsense knowledge differs from encyclopedic knowledge in that it deals with general knowledge rather than the details of specific entities."
Commonsense knowledge is "real world knowledge that can provide a basis for additional knowledge to be gathered and interpreted automatically".
The commonsense world consists of "time, space, physical interactions, people, and so on".
Common sense is "all the knowledge about the world that we take for granted but rarely state out loud".
Common sense is "broadly reusable background knowledge that's not specific to a particular subject area... knowledge that you ought to have."
NYU professor Ernest Davis characterizes commonsense knowledge as "what a typical seven year old knows about the world", including physical objects, substances, plants, animals, and human society. It usually excludes book-learning, specialized knowledge, and knowledge of conventions; but it sometimes includes knowledge about those topics. For example, knowing how to play cards is specialized knowledge, not "commonsense knowledge"; but knowing that people play cards for fun does count as "commonsense knowledge".
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