Steps toward Formalizing Context

The importance of contextual reasoning is emphasized by various researchers in AI. (A partial list includes John McCarthy and his group, R. V. Guha, Yoav Shoham, Giuseppe Attardi and Maria Simi, and Fausto Giunchiglia and his group.) Here, we survey the problem of formalizing context and explore what is needed for an acceptable account of this abstract notion. Although the word context is frequently used in descriptions, explanations, and analyses of computer programs in these areas, its meaning is frequently left to the reader's understanding; that is, it is used in an implicit and intuitive manner. An example of how contexts may help in AI is found in McCarthy's (constructive) criticism (McCarthy 1984) of I wish honorable gentlemen would have the fairness to give the entire context of what I did say, and not pick out detached words (R. Cobden [1849], quoted in Oxford English Dictionary [1978], p. 902). The main motivation for studying formal contexts is to resolve the problem of generality in AI.