Common sense, and how it is checked

• Covers: what counts as a common-sense test, and the sweep of questions it asks per reasoning subsystem.
• Not here: what each subsystem does with the questions → the subsystem's own page, from README.md.
• Assumes: context, defeasible, abducible_predicate → glossary.md.

Two test namespaces ask this knowledge base the questions it exists to answer, one per reasoning subsystem.

common_sense_test.clj	reasoning over the shipped schema and the test-world's cast
common_sense_qualitative_test.clj	the six algebras plus duration and metric time, over networks

What counts as a common-sense test

A question with no stored answer. That is the whole selection rule, and it is what separates these two namespaces from the three hundred beside them: a test that reads back what its fixture asserted is testing storage, and belongs next to the subsystem it exercises. What is left is knowledge the KB produced — a type nobody stated, a comparison nobody computed, a containment nobody wrote down.

The second rule is that each one is phrased the way somebody would ask it. A cup in a box in a room is in the room. Half an hour and an hour are ninety minutes. Which of two animals is heavier is read off their weights. If the name of a test needs the engine's vocabulary to make sense, it is a subsystem test wearing the wrong hat.

The sweep

subsystem	the question it is asked	doc
taxonomy	is a penguin a thing; is a dog a cat	taxonomy.md
disjointness	can one animal be two kinds that exclude each other	taxonomy.md
inheritance	are dogs bigger than ants, given only that mammals are bigger than insects	inherit.md
argument types	what is Bone1, given only that Muffet eats it	argtypes.md
evaluables	is 1970 before 1995; what is 3 × (2 + 4)	inference.md
backward chaining	who is older, given two birth years	inference.md
defaults	does the eagle fly, and does the penguin	nmtms.md
exceptions	told the cat is asleep, is it still awake	exceptions.md
belief	known-true against a default, and default against default	nmtms.md
aggregation	how many children has Bob; how many of the people are parents	aggregate.md
negation as failure	is anything known about whether the cat is asleep	naf.md
inertia	the cat fell asleep at three and woke at five — asleep at four	time.md
change over time	told later that it was let out, is it still indoors	time.md
joined NAF	is any child of Tom a sibling of Ann — one witness, not two	naf.md
universals	is every child of Bob a parent; is every child of a childless cat	naf.md
closed extents	told the sibling relation is completely known, are these two not siblings	naf.md
abduction	why would a dog not be awake	abduction.md
equality	two names arrive for one person	equality.md
non-atomic terms	who is the mother of this dog, named or not	nat.md
skolemization	every dog had a mother, whether or not anyone knows who	skolem.md
quantity	does a kilogram outweigh 999 grams; which animal is heavier	quantity.md
mereology	where is the piston, given where the car is	contexts.md
contexts	can the social theory see the natural world's facts	contexts.md
levels	how hard was each of these to answer	levels.md
RCC-8	a cup in a box in a room	space.md
scenarios	write down one arrangement that satisfies all of it	scenario.md
refutation	three intervals each before the next, in a ring	qcn.md
Allen	breakfast before lunch before dinner	time.md
point algebra	one moment before another before a third	time.md
events on a clock	is the hare asleep while the tortoise goes past	time.md
cardinal direction	north of something east of something	space.md
relative direction	left of a thing left of a thing	space.md
distance	two things very close to a third	space.md
duration	half an hour and an hour; two meals that cannot overlap	duration.md
metric time	six hours then six hours	stp.md
sign arithmetic	does the tub fill while the tap beats the drain	sign.md
trends	does a cooling body's temperature fall	sign.md

What is deliberately not here. Anytime evaluation bounds a computation rather than answering about the world, and within fifty milliseconds is not a common-sense question. The Solver protocol wants a labelling context and set/assumptionRule rules to ground, which is a mechanism rather than a story — the belief question it settles is asked above, at the level a person would ask it. Equational rewriting, preview, watch, overlay and the foreign bridge are not claims about the world at all.

What the schema carries for these questions

Four things the questions need live in the shipped KB rather than in the tests, because a gap a test papers over locally is a gap every other consumer still has.

The unit table. CxMeasure ships Length in Meter, Mass in Kilogram and Duration in Second, so the measure vocabulary is something a query can compute with rather than a grammar. The test for admitting a unit is the one CxCore applies to its own vocabulary: a unit belongs when its factor is a definition rather than a measurement. A minute is sixty seconds by stipulation; how much a particular dog weighs is not.

weightOf / heightOf, and the comparisons over them. heavierThan and tallerThan are backward rules in CxSize reading two measures through the quantity provers — the same shape olderThan has over two birth years. All three are also declared transitive, which is the route a common-sense KB actually takes: nobody weighs an elephant, and two stated comparisons compose into a third off the closure. The two halves of CxSize are deliberately not connected: a dog being a larger kind than a cat does not make this dog heavier than that cat.

The sign vocabulary, and no numbers at all. CxMeasure also ships signOf / trendOf, the three qualitative* arithmetic relations, the derivativeOf edge and greaterInMagnitudeThan — which is the layer for the questions a person can answer and a measure cannot, because nobody has the figure. A tub fills while the tap beats the drain, and the KB says so from four sentences none of which mentions a litre (sign.md).

motherOf / fatherOf, with MotherFn / FatherFn beside them. The reified functions are what let a KB name somebody by their role before it knows their name, and the correspondence is what stops (MotherFn Pup) from minting a second name for a mother already stored. Both predicates are functional, so a second mother merges rather than piling up.

The event calculus, and the fluents to run it on. CxChange ships the inertia axioms and CxTime the vocabulary they are stated in, so asleep at four is a question about the shipped KB rather than about a theory the test wrote for itself. The fluents are the test-world's, because a fluent is contingent: (AsleepFn Whiskers) is one animal's state, and CxWell is where the cast declares its reifiable functions so the natural world and the fables can both use them.

One abducible grant. CxBiology declares (abducible_predicate asleep) and nothing else, which is what makes why is this dog not awake answerable and why does it not fly refused with the dead end named. A grant is a policy the context states, and the whole value of abduction here is what is not granted.

Running it

lein test vaelii.common-sense-test vaelii.common-sense-qualitative-test

Both are ordinary members of :default, so lein gate runs them.