Adrian,
Thanks for clarifying. That fact wasn't apparent from what I had read
on the IBL web site. Where does the logical language reside in the IBL
system? Is that language RDF (which has extremely limited semantics, in
particular, no rules)?
<http://www.reengineeringllc.com/what_is_internet_business_logic.html>
talks about generating SQL from the pseudo-English statements. There are
many other questions I would have however. Since English words are
polysemous, how is disambiguation accomplished? The grammar shown at
<http://www.reengineeringllc.com/rule_examples.html> such as "customer
some-cust-number is on the some-type plan effective some-plan-start-date"
is certainly not grammatical English. How does the user learn the syntax,
and how is that syntax an improvement over other computer languages like
SQL? How does the user know or tell the machine what ambiguous English
words mean in a detail suitable for formal inference?
I agree completely that we need to bind English to logic. In my own
work, I've used SUMO and KIF to provide explicit semantics, a standard
first order logic system for reasoning, mappings from the WordNet lexicon
to SUMO to specify the connection between language and meaning, and a
restricted subset of grammatical English to handle user input. You might
be interested in that work, which is described at
<http://home.earthlink.net/~adampease/professional/Pease-NLPKE.pdf>. If
you have time, I'd be interested in your questions, and any thoughts you
might have on how my approach would be compared with IBL, as well as
responses to my questions above. (01)
Adam (02)
At 08:28 AM 1/2/2004 -0500, Adrian Walker wrote:
>Adam --
>
>Thanks for your comments, below.
>
>You wrote: "...IBL as far as I can see isn't using a logical language."
>
>The logical basis for the IBL is in Backchain Iteration: Towards a
>Practical Inference Method that is Simple Enough to be Proved Terminating,
>Sound and Complete. Journal of Automated Reasoning, 11:1-22, and in the
>earlier papers that it references. There's a model/fixpoint theory, an
>interpreter/compiler, and proofs that the i/c implements the model theory.
>
>So, I would argue that the IBL is using a logical language, in quite a
>strong sense. The "Semantic Web Presentation" at www.reengineeringllc.com
>argues further that binding English to a solid logical basis like this is
>going to be essential in the real world.
>
>Of course, we would all like to see a solution to the "big AI problem" of
>rigorously understanding all of natural language. The IBL FAQs mention
>that this is difficult. But meanwhile, the hope is that our system
>provides something reliable and useful, and perhaps a pointer to new
>approaches to the big problem.
>
>Thanks in advance for any further discussion.
>
> Best, -- Adrian
>
>
> INTERNET BUSINESS LOGIC
>
> www.reengineeringllc.com
>
>Dr. Adrian Walker
>Reengineering LLC
>PO Box 1412
>Bristol
>CT 06011-1412 USA
>
>Phone: USA 860 583 9677
>Cell: USA 860 830 2085
>Fax: USA 860 314 1029
>
>
>
>
>At 07:29 PM 1/1/04 -0800, you wrote:
>>Adrian,
>> Specifying rules in a natural language has long been a goal of
>> programming language research and AI, but a very elusive one. IBL
>> however looks like yet another attempt to put some simple syntactic
>> sugar on top of SQL. This is potentially useful, but a very different
>> issue from the need to use a formal logical language to capture
>> semantics, rather than capturing syntax. IBL as far as I can see isn't
>> using a logical language.
>>
>>Adam
>>
>>At 09:29 PM 1/1/2004 -0500, Adrian Walker wrote:
>>>Adam --
>>>
>>>You wrote.... FWIW, my take is that topic maps are yet another syntax
>>>specification, lacking any logical semantics. So OWL, KIF or any other
>>>logical language is appropriate for capturing semantics (meaning), while
>>>topic maps are not. One can convert syntax and labels from one to the
>>>other, but semantics will be lost.
>>>
>>>You may be interested in the "Semantic Web Presentation" at
>>>www.reengineeringllc.com . It argues that there is yet another
>>>dimension to "semantics" -- namely that it's going to be necessary to
>>>use plain English computationally on top of whatever logical language is
>>>chosen.
>>>
>>>The examples in the presentation can be run (and changed) by pointing a
>>>browser to the same site.
>>>
>>>Hope this is of interest. Cheers, -- Adrian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> INTERNET BUSINESS LOGIC
>>>
>>> www.reengineeringllc.com
>>>
>>>Dr. Adrian Walker
>>>Reengineering LLC
>>>PO Box 1412
>>>Bristol
>>>CT 06011-1412 USA
>>>
>>>Phone: USA 860 583 9677
>>>Cell: USA 860 830 2085
>>>Fax: USA 860 314 1029
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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