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A formal theory of commonsense psychology : how people think people think
Gordon A., Hobbs J., Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2017. 584 pp. Type: Book (978-1-107151-00-0)
Date Reviewed: Oct 5 2018

In introducing commonsense psychology, this book motivates readers to consider computational psychology. It describes the foundational building blocks of such computations. It provides not only purely mathematical predicates, but also those based on real-life psychological entities.

The first part of the book is an introduction to commonsense psychology. Chapter 1 is a motivational discussion on the scientific approach to psychology. Chapter 2 explains the approach of having a common model between humans and computers, with details suitable to both. Chapter 3 describes the basic steps of formalizing common sense. The steps include gathering strategies, working on representation, preparing a draft of the formalization, and so on. Chapter 4 presents a catalog of synonymous words/phrases. The words/phrases are taken from various fields such as planning, scheduling, and so on.

The second part introduces the logics. Chapters 5 through 8 introduce the structure of eventualities, with predicates for events, generation, set theory, substitution, and major operations (conjunction, disjunction, negation, and implication). Chapter 9 has predicates on pairs. Chapter 10 introduces composite entities, the entities made up of components. Chapter 11 introduces the concept of defeasibility, where a classical logically made conclusion may be defeated by more information. Chapter 12 presents scales as partial orders. Chapter 13 presents predicates for elementary arithmetic. Chapters 14 and 15 are on changes and related causes, agents, and so on. Chapter 16 covers time-related predicates like rates and frequencies. Chapter 17 revisits events and gives predicates for subevents, sequences of events, and iterations. Chapters 18 through 20 develop predicates that are more connected to the real world, such as human agents and physical distances.

The last part of the book builds predicates from the basic predicates developed in Part 2. The chapters focus on human agents. Chapters 21 through 25 discuss the features of human agents, which include beliefs, assumptions, inference, justification, comparison, storing of knowledge, thinking about the future, and explanation processes. The rest of the book focuses on managing aspects of human agents. Chapters 26 through 29 cover goals, with details such as expectations, subgoals, plans, functionality, and goal themes. Chapter 30 discusses the possible threats an agent may face. Chapters 31, 32, and 35 through 39 are on plans. The details include planning processes, strategies, types of plans, goal management, elements of plans, plan construction processes, and plan adaptation. Chapter 33 introduces executions, and chapters 40 through 46 describe executions in detail. The details include artifact-based designs, design decisions, task scheduling, monitoring executions, costs, incomplete executions, outcomes, and repetitive executions. Chapter 48 is on evaluating agent skills and performance. Chapter 49 explores the role of emotions.

The book develops lots of predicates, but does not talk about where to apply them in real-life applications. Common sense is discussed in the beginning, but later on the book confines itself to management-related senses only. A possible application I can think of is simulating management in a new or existing business. The impact of psychological factors on management can be studied with such simulations.

Reviewer:  Maulik A. Dave Review #: CR146264 (1812-0630)
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