Computational Logic and Human Thinking

Robert Kowalski is Emeritus Professor and Research Investigator in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. He recently received the IJCAI 2011 Award for Research Excellence for his contributions to logic for knowledge representation and problem solving, including his pioneering work on automated theorem proving and logic programming.

• Preface; Summary and plan of the book; 1. Logic on the Underground; 2. The psychology of logic; 3. The fox and the crow; 4. Search; 5. Negation as failure; 6. How to become a British citizen; 7. The louse and the Mars explorer; 8. Maintenance goals as the driving force of life; 9. The meaning of life; 10. Abduction; 11. The prisoner's dilemma; 12. Motivations matter; 13. The changing world; 14. Logic and objects; 15. Biconditionals; 16. Computational logic and the selection task; 17. Meta-logic; Conclusions of the book; References; Index.

'[This book] is a superb introduction both to AI from within a computational logic framework and to its application to human rationality and reasoning. Nothing else comes close. Kowalski writes with philosophical insight and just the right level of technical expertise. He puts the excitement back in AI. This sets [this book] apart from the technically overwhelming, and all too often largely unintuitive and uninspiring, encyclopedic introductions that currently dominate the field.' Thomas A. Blackson, Arizona State University