Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology based conversational interfaces

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

Rich,

Thanks for the link to the discourse analysis book. Based on looking at its TOC, I think it's definitely worth a read, although, being published in 1983, most of its value probably lies in documenting the history of discourse analysis. I also don't see any of the formal ontology in the book that you alluded to.

Another strange thing is that except for the Big Names in the bibliography -- Chafe, Fillmore, Johnson-Laird, Partee, Quine, Searle, etc -- I don't recognize many of the other authors listed there. But perhaps that just indicates that I haven't read enough. Or perhaps it represents a break with the past, that a genuine new path was taken by more current authors. I don't know.

Here's a 1996 article by Hans Kamp, who is, in the current literature, one of the Big Names in discourse representation theory. I cite it to indicate that those developing current DRT are interested in formalization, and not just in philosophical generalizations. (It costs $40 if you don't have access to a university library, so I haven't read it myself yet, and it actually sounds like a book one could skip.)

1. Hans Kamp & Uwe Reyle (1996). A Calculus for First Order Discourse Representation Structures. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 5 (3-4):297-348.
2. This paper presents a sound and complete proof system for the first order fragment of Discourse Representation Theory. Since the inferences that human language users draw from the verbal input they receive for the most transcend the capacities of such a system, it can be no more than a basis on which more powerful systems, which are capable of producing those inferences, may then be built. Nevertheless, even within the general setting of first order logic the structure of the formulas of DRS-languages, i.e. of the Discourse Representation Structures suggest for the components of such a system inference rules that differ somewhat from those usually found in proof systems for the first order predicate calculus and which are, we believe, more in keeping with inference patterns that are actually employed in common sense reasoning.This is why we have decided to publish the present exercise, in spite of the fact that it is not one for which a great deal of originality could be claimed. In fact, it could be argued that the problem addressed in this paper was solved when Gödel first established the completeness of the system of Principia Mathematica for first order logic. For the DRS-languages we consider here are straightforwardly intertranslatable with standard formulations of the predicate calculus; in fact the translations are so straightforward that any sound and complete proof system for first order logic can be used as a sound and complete proof system for DRSs: simply translate the DRSs into formulas of predicate logic and then proceed as usual. As a matter of fact, this is how one has chosen to proceed in some implementations of DRT, which involve inferencing as well as semantic representation; an example is the Lex system developed jointly by IBM and the University of Tübingen (see in particular (Guenthner et al. 1986))

Tom

On Monday, July 13, 2015 5:00 PM, Rich Cooper <metasemantics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John,

 

Thanks for the reference.  It's a three page definition of Umwelt, but here is a salient quote of what you may have meant:

 

What UexkuÈ ll uniquely realized was that the physical environment, in whatever sense it may be said to be the `same' for all organisms (we are speaking, of course, of the environment on earth, though much of what we say could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to biospheres on other planets should such eventually be found), is not the world in which any given species as such actually lives out its life. No. Each biological life-form, by reason of its distinctive bodily constitution (its `biological heritage', as we may say), is suited only to certain parts and aspects of the vast physical universe. And when this `suitedness to' takes the bodily form of cognitive organs, such as are our own senses, or the often quite di€erent sensory modalities discovered in other lifeforms, then those aspects and only those aspects of the physical environment which are proportioned to those modalities become `objecti®ed', that is to say, made present not merely physically but cognitively as well.

 

For those interested in conversational interfaces, Here is a free pdf about discourse and conversational analysis: 

 

https://abudira.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/discourse-analysis-by-gillian-brown-george-yule.pdf

 

There are a lot of discourse analysis papers in pdf on the web, but very few are really about the ontology within which a conversational system must operate.  Most are more Social Science, or English or Philosophy in context and don't go to the symbolic level. This is the best book I have come across so far, unless someone has a better one, also available on the web in a PDF or a Kindle version, or otherwise available to the casual researchers.  I will invest some time in this one, but only in studying it. 

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper,

Rich Cooper,

 

Chief Technology Officer,

MetaSemantics Corporation

MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2

http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com

 

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2015 5:21 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology based conversational interfaces

 

On 7/11/2015 10:48 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:

> Since you are so persistent about insisting that every observer sees

> the same objective reality as the next one, I will concede the point to you.

 

That's not what I said.

 

Everybody knows that different people (and animals) have different views, opinions, and ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.

 

For example, your pet dog, cat, or whatever may live in your home.

But you and your pet have very different experiences and ways of perceiving and acting.  But it would be misleading to say that you and your pet live in different houses.

 

If you want a technical term that has an associated theory that has been explored in some depth, I suggest 'Umwelt'.  The 'Welt'

component means 'world', but the theory of the Umwelt focuses on the way it's experienced.  See the article by John Deely:

https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/umwelt-deely.pdf

 

An excerpt:

> an Umwelt is not merely the aspects of the environment accessed in

> sensation. Far more is it the manner in which those aspects are

> networked together as and to constitute 'objects of experience'...

> Jakob von Uexküll ... saw that the difference between objects of

> experience and elements of sensation is determined primarily not by

> anything in the physical environment as such but by the relation or,

> rather, network and set of relations that obtains between whatever may

> be 'in fact' present physically in the surroundings and the cognitive

> constitution of the biological organism interacting with those

> surroundings here and now.

 

John

 

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