Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology vs KR

[Doug McDavid <dougmcdavid@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ed, you mentioned 5 or 6 English words for snow"?  How about the 35 listed here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_snow 

On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 8:53 AM, Barkmeyer, Edward J <edward.barkmeyer@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Simon,

 

Thanks for this.  Just reading Pullum was a tonic for the day.  (His characterization of Whorf alone was worth the read.)

 

But whether some Arctic language has 4 words for snow or four dozen is not Mark’s point.  As Pullum himself says, English has 5 or 6 words for wintry precipitation as well.  The question at issue, I thought, was whether there is any single notion that lies at the heart of all of them and is “fundamental”, as opposed to a set of closely related concepts, which are not perceived to be more than that.  And ‘closely related’ is at heart a term for ‘free association’.  What is related is what we perceive to be related:  It can be the 6 blind men and the elephant.

 

In the same vein, BTW, I think Rich Cooper’s contention that perception and action are fundamental concepts in the infant mind is at least half in doubt.  The universal presence of sensory systems in even primitive creatures suggests that some ‘perception’/’sensation’ concept is fundamental down to some low level of complex life form, and humans are well above that level.  But it is my understanding that infants actually ‘discover’ action by sensory feedback.  They have to learn all motor control.  In the early stages of that process, muscle activation is just another kind of sensation, and the baby learns that he can cause it.  Perhaps a “more fundamental” idea is cause and effect.

 

A further linguistic counterexample to ‘fundamental notions’ appeared in a recent National Geographic article.  There is a primitive upper Amazon people that appears to have no sense of time.  The language has no concept of tense or ‘past’ or ‘future’, and the people themselves live in a very immediate present and lose all interest in any fact or activity that is not continuing within a few hours.

 

I am quite happy to send the knights errant out on the quest for the holy grail of universal fundamental concepts; it keeps them from ransacking productive villages.

 

-Ed

 

P.S.  The version of “Eskimo words for snow” that my linguistics professor of 50 years ago offered was that Swahili has 22 words for what we might ‘walking’, because the nature of the physical motion and the surrounding concerns are importantly different, and he offered the list from some study.  Conversely, it is a common practice in languages to extend the meaning of a formerly narrower term rather than to create a new one, as in the French extension of ‘noix’ from ‘walnut’ to generic ‘nut’.  It is always about what makes a difference (or doesn’t) to the speaker.  I should think ‘fundamental’ is what makes a difference to ALL speakers.

 

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Spero
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2014 3:39 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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