Commonsense Inferences - definition, technique and theory

What is a commonsense inference? Suppose I say - John is standing on the podium. What commonsense inferences can you draw from it? One is that John is "higher" than the rest of the people. 

How does one go from an original statement to an inference of its? Suppose someone tells you that x > 5. You would say - so, x > 0 or x^2 > 25. How did you arrive at these inferences? By doing certain 'operations' upon the given statement. Can we imitate this for English statements? Can we fiddle and play with given statements to derive inferences from them? Yes. There is a way.

There is a simple technique. Visualise a typical, commonsense image corresponding to the given statement - what the statement is saying. There will be several elements/entities in the image around the subject of the sentence. SEE THE EFFECT OF THE GIVEN STATEMENT ON EACH OF THOSE SURROUNDING ELEMENTS/ENTITIES!! Or, see the surrounding entities in relation to the subject, in the light of the given information in the statement. So, when someone tells you John is standing on the podium, visualise the scene. What do you see? John, a stage, a dias, a mike, the audience, a hall etc. Now just mechanically see each of these elements in the ways described above. It is very easy to arrive at the above commonsense inference - John is higher than the rest

Take another example, in detail - the petrol in the car got over. What are the surrounding elements? car, road, trees, people, other cars, buildings etc.

Element            Related Inference

Car -                 the car cant move ahead

Road -              Car is at a fixed spot/patch on the road.

Trees -              NA

People -            watching this stuck up car

Other cars -       traffic jam

buildings -          NA

I also claim this to be partially/hazily overlapping with a could-be theory of how the human mind does this process.