Re: meaning of symbols - (01)
Patrick Durusau wrote:
>> The "meaning" of a symbol is always determined with recourse to
human
interpretation. (02)
Not exactly. The issue of how to "ground" the meanings of symbols is a
lot more complex than just saying that a person is going to read it
before any meaning is assigned. If that were the case, no system could
ever hope to perform automatic processing, even for something as
trivial as sending a late-payment notice, without human intervention.
For automatic processing that has real-world effects, the system is
"told" the meaning by associating actions with specific states (an "if
state, then action" rule). In the case where the ontology has only
state descriptions, the action rules are typically part of the
procedural code that uses the ontology, but they could also be part of
an executable specification. (03)
The meaning of "meaning" is a much-debated topic, but properly
constructed, an automatic system can tell whether or not some set of
symbols (e.g. words in a sentence) are in fact meaningful, or are
gibberish - according to whatever set of rules the system is taught,
including semantic and pragmatic, not just syntactic rules. If the
system is able to understand and respond to language with the facility
of a human, it can be fairly said to have understood the meaning of the
sentences it responds to properly. No current system can do that at
even the level of a six-year-old, but there are systems that do some
interpretation to a certain extent, and they can be fairly said to have
understood some part of the meaning. Meaning isn't usually an
all-or-nothing measure, but graded. An expert can usually understand
more of the meaning of a technical description than a novice can. (04)
There are various ways to "ground" the meaning of symbols. One is for
a symbol-processing system to be able to recognize instances of classes
in the ontology. At a simple level, a computer reading a file on a
disk and tokenizing the sentences and recognizing the legal "words" in
the file has grasped part of the meaning of that file, a real-life
physical object. For a computer to do all the kinds of things
college-educated people do, a lot more of the meaning has to be
recognized, but getting to that point is part of our current task, no? (05)
Those working in robotics have to be very careful to assign the proper
"meaning" to the symbols their programs use, or the robot fails to do
its task, in a very visible manner. Recognizing things in the real
world and responding appropriately is to me very clear evidence that
some elements of "meaning" of the input signals have been properly
interpreted - without a person intervening at any point from receipt of
the "symbol" (sensor inputs) to response. (06)
Perhaps you want to argue that any elements of "meaning" that a
computer may seem to understand must first be put there by people. Of
course, machines are artifacts created by people. (Yawn) People are
objects created by evolution. The fact that it took millions of years
for humans to develop a way to learn how to assign meaning to their
linguistic inputs, and takes years for individuals to learn how to
assign meanings to linguistic inputs, but only seconds or minutes to
upload a complex cognitive system into a computer, is certainly of
great significance. But whether or not a cognitive system can properly
assign "meaning" to inputs must be judged by whether the system
responds appropriately to the inputs, according to whatever goal or
motivational schema that cognitive system is using. The adequacy of
the response is a different issue from how the system learned to make
that response. (07)
I think it is quite appropriate to say that some existing
knowledge-based programs can assign some elements of meaning to the
inputs (symbols) they get, and respond appropriately, without any human
interpretation of the input. In most cases, it is nowhere near as much
meaning as people can currently assign, but "meaning" nevertheless. (08)
Pat (09)
Patrick Cassidy
MITRE Corporation
260 Industrial Way
Eatontown, NJ 07724
Mail Stop: MNJE
Phone: 732-578-6340
Cell: 908-565-4053
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Email: pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx (010)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick
Durusau
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 1:01 PM
To: Adam Pease
Cc: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: language vs. ontology was Re: [ontolog-forum] April 20
session on tagging ontolog content (011)
Adam, (012)
Adam Pease wrote: (013)
> Patrick,
> I think there's a misunderstanding here. It's not just a question
> of precision in the conventional sense. Of course we try to make our (014)
> documents and laws precise. But the meaning of those texts is
> determined with recourse to human interpretation. In a formal
> ontology like SUMO, or DOLCE, one could replace all the term names
> with arbitrary unique symbols, and an automated deductive system,
> following the rules of mathematical logic (in our case, first order
> logic) could reach all the same conclusions as it could if those
> intelligible labels were present. The meaning of the symbols is
> defined mathematically, and no human interpretation is required to
> give them meaning. (015)
Yes, there is a misunderstanding here. (016)
defining a mathematical logic between arbitrary unique symbols !=
defining the meaning of arbitrary unique symbols (017)
Yes, whatever symbols are substituted, the outcomes of defined
operations would be the same. (018)
That is not the same as defining the "meaning" of a symbol
mathematically. (019)
The "meaning" of a symbol is always determined with recourse to human
interpretation. How else would you explain the use of WordNet
references
in SUMO? Of what possible relevance are WordNet entries if the meaning
of symbols is being defined mathematically? The answer is that the
"meaning" of the symbols is being defined by making references to
something outside of the mathematical definition of relationships
between the symbols. (020)
>
> That's relevant because it enables one to do things like prove the
> absence of contradictions in the use of these terms with an automated (021)
> system. In contrast, without such a property, humans have to
> determine whether usage of terminological or linguistic based
> standards are compliant. Standards compliance is something I would
> think would be relevant to the world bank.
>
Not to put too fine a point on it but you seem to be eliding over the
fact that the development of SUMO was based upon human interpretation
and construction of the rules that can then be automatically applied.
It
wasn't simply a matter of putting mathematical rules in a box of
symbols
and shaking it until the result suddenly appeared. (022)
The compliance the world bank (or any other concern) is interested in
is
compliance with their terms, which may or may not use the same rules
for
complaince that can be found in SUMO. Yes, logic can prove a lack of
contradiction but then so can careful definition of terms and what is
or
is not considered to be a conflict. (023)
Note that I do consider SUMO and similar efforts to be worthwhile. But, (024)
I don't think that they divorce the meaning of symbols from human
interpretation nor are they the best solutions for all cases. As I
noted
earlier today, we have been down the road of universal languages before (025)
and none has succeeded to date. (026)
Hope you are having a great day! (027)
Patrick (028)
> Adam
>
> At 03:08 AM 4/8/2006, Patrick Durusau wrote:
>
>> Adam,
>>
>> Adam Pease wrote:
>>
>>> Folks,
>>> For what it's worth, I think there is a common problem surfacing
>>> here, that Bill has tried to point out. Language and ontology are
>>> different. Human language (and any given word in a human language) (029)
>>> is ambiguous and highly contextual. Terms in an ontology are not
>>> ambiguous (or at least, shouldn't be if they are properly and
>>> formally defined).
>>> Typically, this has been a problem, because computational
>>> linguists have often used linguistic elements as pseudo-logical
>>> terms in semantic forms. Ontology builders often use linguistic
>>> elements as proxies for doing a full semantic definition, leaving
>>> much of the interpretation embedded in the conventional meaning of
>>> the linguistic-based term.
>>> The approach we've taken in SUMO is to make this distinction
>>> explicit, and to address language and ontology in separate but
>>> related products. SUMO is the formal ontology with terms defined
>>> unambiguously in first order logic. Those terms are related
through
>>> semi-formal links to the word senses in Princeton's WordNet.
>>
>>
>> Language and ontology are different???
>>
>> Hmmm, well the foundational paper for SUMO states:
>>
>> "In order to enable continued progress in ecommerce and software
>> integration, we must give
>> computers a common language with a richness that more closely
>> approaches that of human
>> language."
http://home.earthlink.net/~adampease/professional/FOIS.pdf
>>
>> Granted a great deal of effort has gone into making SUMO precise,
but
>> the same could be done for any language. It is interesting but not
>> persuasive that its terms have been "defined unambigouously in first (030)
>> order logic." And that is relevant for what reason? Perhaps first
>> order logic is not relevant to all the problems faced by the World
>> Bank. Recall that the current fascination with first order logic is
a
>> repeat of a debate that has ebbed and flowed for many years. Justice (031)
>> Holmes wrote in the 1890's that the life of the law had been
>> experience and not logic.
>> (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2373/2373-h/2373-h.htm)
>>
>> In any event, there is no reason to disenfranchise the World Bank
>> from representing their language/ontology in favor of using SUMO.
>> There have been any number of attempts to produce universal
>> languages, LogLang is one of the more recent ones.
>>
>> There are standards that seek to empower users to define their own
>> languages/ontologies and yet remain mappable to others. See, for
>> example the Topic Maps Reference Model CD draft at:
>> http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0710.pdf.
>>
>> Hope you are having a great day!
>>
>> Patrick
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Durusau
>> Patrick@xxxxxxxxxxx
>> Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
>> Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
>> Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005
>>
>> Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!
>>
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>
>
> ----------------------------
> Adam Pease
> http://www.ontologyportal.org - Free ontologies and tools
>
>
>
>
> (032)
--
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@xxxxxxxxxxx
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005 (033)
Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work! (034)
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