Dear Simon,
By “fundamental”, I don’t imply “universal”.
I agree; “there can be no fundamental ontology of perception or of action” to paraphrase your statement about my statement. All I am saying is that, in a linguistic environment such as the patent database, or a medical EHR database, or in any database with lots of unstructured text columns (there’s that word again), the vocabulary is different from other linguistic environments. So Agent Jane has a fundamental capability for perception and action that is within human genetic tolerances, but her vocabulary is likely different from Agent Robert’s vocabulary, even if Robert has essentially the same capabilities for perception, and for many actions.
The point is simply that each agent has an initial state. There may be 73 agents with the same initial state – computer scientist – and another 178 agents with a different state – chemical engineer – but each agent grows its own vocabulary from an initial ability to discuss its own state (the infant vocabulary) into a much richer adult vocabulary.
I am in no way claiming that any one state is the same for all agents, which seems like a possible alternative to be explored though. The individual agents would still go through learning and training episodes that uniquely specialize them. That induces a bias in each agent according to his or her training experiences.
This is a good way to engineer agents, but human genetics is unique all the way down to the individual, if geneticists are to be believed.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Spero
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2014 12:39 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology vs KR
<http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/EskimoHoax.pdf>
<http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/>
< http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/wfdt8.htm>
< http://books.google.com/books/about/Science_as_Social_Knowledge.html?id=M16zQgAACAAJ>
< http://www.amazon.com/Who-Knows-Quine-Feminist-Empiricism/dp/0877226474>
On Oct 3, 2014 9:16 PM, "Mark H Linehan" <mhl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Regarding "... perception and action are possibly the most fundamental
objects. Therefore I suggest that the vocabulary of sentences communicating
among the agents would have names for designating perceptions and actions,
as initially present in the infant agent ...."
It is well known that different language groups have varying number of
discrete concepts for things like types of snow or shades of colors.
Similarly, different individuals, and groups of individuals, have varying
capabilities for actions and hence varying vocabularies of action.
Therefore, it seems unlikely that there can be a fundamental ontology of
perception or of action.
This is NOT an argument against the idea that "... perception and action are
... the most fundamental objects." It IS an argument against the idea that
there is some "... vocabulary ... for designating perceptions and actions,
as initially present in the infant agent ...."
Mark H. Linehan
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Friday, October 3, 2014 3:21 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology vs KR
Dear John,
By "handle" I probably should have said
"designate". I am thinking of the handle (a
pointer) you use in a program to indicate the base location of an object
type. The point is, that in looking for fundamentals among human-like
behaviors, you suggested that perception and action are possibly the most
fundamental objects.
Therefore I suggest that the vocabulary of sentences communicating among the
agents would have names for designating perceptions and actions, as
initially present in the infant agent, prior to learning. Learning will add
new words to the kernel vocabulary, layer by layer.
Present technology is fairly good at detecting perceptions of more objective
physical realities, but not at reading psychosocial scenes. Present
perceiving capabilities are not up to human levels in many areas, beyond
human levels in other, and will remain so dimorphic for the foreseeable
future. But they are there, and can be embodied into any agent you may
choose to build.
Actions, by humans, were beautifully shaped by evolution into smooth,
minimal energy-consuming, coordinated movements of the agents effectors,
with feedback from the agent's sensors. When we evolved to plan and execute
more complex actions, the new actions were built as combinations on top of
the kernel actions.
Therefore the infant Kernel of the agent, prior to learning, should include
a vocabulary of each and every perception, and each and every action, plus a
pool of constants, variables and constraints among them, as imposed by the
agent on the environment, and by the environment on the agent.
Learning, based on interaction with knowledge sources (humans, patents,
databases, social networks,...), would of course introduce more and more new
words. Within the realm of patent databases, if word A is called out in a
claim, only As will do. No Bs can just be freely substituted without
demonstrating that B is a true synonym of A, or is an effective equivalent
to A according to the doctrine of equivalents.
So starting with a vocabulary of objects (as
perceived) and actions (as perceived) in claim sentences, the vocabulary can
grow in layers from the Kernel vocabulary up to nearly anything that is
lexically distinguishable. I call each layer a "context", and the IDEF0
model of that context introduces all the constants, variables and
constraints which connect that context to its partitions and to its
immediate parent context(s).
Is that a fair summary?
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2014 10:59 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology vs KR
Rich,
The verb 'handle' is extremely vague (or at least underspecified).
In most cases, it means, approximately, "do something with".
JFS
> Any propositional representation in any
language,natural or artificial,
> is an approximation that is based on some
"interesting position on the
> tradeoff". But there is no limit to the number
and kinds of tradeoffs
> for different purposes. Peirce's "twin gates"
of perception and action
> determine the symbol grounding for any and all
representations.
RC
> Then you seem to believe that perception and
action (i.e., embodied agent
> with such) handle all designation of the
vocabulary used to describe what
> was perceived and what action(s) were performed.
The discussions about symbol grounding ask how words and other symbols
relate to the world, directly or indirectly.
Peirce, Wittgenstein,
and others said that the meaning is based on or derived from the way those
symbols are related to perception and action.
For concrete words like 'dog' or 'jump', the connections are direct.
For abstractions like 'justice', the connections are more complex and
indirect. But to be meaningful, an abstract concept like Justice must have
some implications for the way people perceive situations and act within
them.
John
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