Linas, It seems to me that analogy falls rather simply out of relational probabilistic reasoning. Say we want to make an analogy between two entities A and B. We essentially look for predicates that hold for both A and B; ie, we look for a way to fill in the blank in "A is like B, because _". Then, if we want to predict something about B, we know A belongs to the same "reference class" and can provide 1 piece if evidence concerning the behavior of entities in that reference class.
--A On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Linas Vepstas <linasveps...@gmail.com>wrote: > On 17 October 2010 18:20, Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote: > >> In other words, using formal grammar actually makes it harder to > establish > >> the connection at the NL-logic interface. IE, it is harder to translate > NL > >> sentences to formal grammar than to formal logic. > >> > >> KY > > > > Quite the opposite, actually. > > > > Translating an NL sentence to a *set* of grammatical trees, > > representing syntactically possible parses, is almost a solved > > problem. E.g. the Stanford parser or the link parser do that. > > > > Then, translating each of these grammatical trees into a *set* of > > formal logic expressions, each representing a possible semantic > > interpretation of the tree, is a partially-solved problem. E.g. > > OpenCog's RelEx and RelEx2Frame components and Cyc's NL subsystem both > > do that (in different ways), though not perfectly. > > > > So based on the current state of the art, it seems that turning NL > > into a formal grammar (e.g. a dependency grammar) is significantly > > less problematic than turning NL into logic, because forming the logic > > representation requires resolving additional ambiguity, beyond that > > which must be resolved to form the formal-grammar representation > > Agree; but would like to add several remarks: > > --part of the difficulty of applying "logic" of NL is the need to handle > spatial reasoning (A is next to B and B is next to C therefore ...? C is > not far from A") > > -- part of the difficulty of applying "logic" of NL is the need to handle > more abstract reasoning (A is the major of B and majors are people > therefore B is a person) (opencyc does this ... not badly) > > -- Some philosophers of mathematics e.g. Carlo cellucci (see "18 > unconventional essays on the nature of mathematics") will stridently > point out that, while classical logic is the format in which proofs are > stated, it is not at all the method by which mathematicians generate > new ideas -- they use reasoning by analogy, by allegory, by induction, > and many others, to generate hypothesis which might be possible > solutions to problems. > > I think that we should realize that the same techniques should be > applied in AGI: we use reasoning by analogy not because it gives > formally correct answers, but because it generates reasonable > hypothesis which may or may not be "true", but which can be > examined in greater detail to see if they are true. These other, > "non-rigorous" reasoning methods are all parts of what we might > call "intuition" -- a set of hard-to-explain reasons why we think > something might be true -- which must then be subjected to more > rigorous analysis to see if yet more evidence can be found. > > In short, real-life, just like mathematics, is all about problem-solving > and not theorem-proving (which is the last step of creating math, > not the first). > > --linas > -- Abram Demski http://lo-tho.blogspot.com/ http://groups.google.com/group/one-logic ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/8660244-d750797a Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
