Ed,
Take the statements
IF it croaks, THEN it is a frog.
IF it is a frog, THEN it is green.
Given an additional statement that it croaks, forward-chaining says that
it is green. There is nothing temporal involved.
- OR -
Given an additional statement that it is green, backward-chaining says
that it MAY croak. Again, nothing temporal involved.
How do you see temporal criteria as being related to my example?
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Porter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 10:40 AM
Subject: **SPAM** RE: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND
BY "THE BINDING PROBLEM"?
Mark,
Since your attack on my statement below is based on nothing but conclusory
statements and contains neither reasoning or evidence to support them, there
is little in your below email to respond to other than your personal spleen.
You have said my statement which your email quotes is "simply incorrect"
without giving any justification.
Your statement that "Temporal criteria are *NOT* relevant to forward and
backward chaining" is itself a conclusory statement.
Furthermore this statement about temporal criteria not being relevant is
more incorrect than correct. If an if-then rule describes a situation where
one thing causes another, or comes before it time, the thing that comes
first is more commonly the if clause (although one can write the rule in the
reverse order). The if clause is commonly called a condition, and the then
clause is sometimes called the consequence, implying a causal or temporal
relationship. The notion of reasoning backward from a goal being backward
chaining, normally involves the notion of reasoning back in imagined time
from a desired goal state. So often TEMPORAL CRITERIA *ARE* RELEVANT TO
WHICH DIRECTION IS FORWARD CHAINING AND WHICH IS BACKWARD.
Even if one were to make a reach, and try to justify your statement that
"Temporal criteria are *NOT* relevant to forward and backward chaining" as
being more than just conclusory by suggesting it was an implicit reference
to statements --- like that contained Richard's prior statements in this
thread or the Wikipedia quote in one of the posts below --- that the
definition of forward and backward chaining depended on whether the
reasoning was from if clause to then clause, or the reverse --- that would
still not correct the groundlessness of your criticism.
This is because the rule that forward chaining is from if clause to then
clause and the reverse for backward chaining has no applicability to
situations where the implication goes both ways and there is no clear
indication of which pattern should be the if clause and which should be the
then clause --- which is precisely the situation I was describing in the
quote from me you unfairly criticized.
Neither Richard's prior statement in this thread nor the Wikipedia
definition below define which direction is forward and which is backward in
many such situations.
In my quote which you attacked I was discussing exactly this situations when
it was not clear which part of an inference pattern should be considered the
if clause and which the then clause. So it appears your criticism either
totally missed, or for other reasons, failed to deal with the issue I was
discussing.
Mark, in general I do not read your posts because, among other things, like
your email below, they are generally poorly reasoned and seemed more
concerned with issues of ego and personality than with learning and teaching
truthful information or insights. I skip many of Richard's for the same
reason, but I do read some of Richard's because despite all his pompous BS
he does occasionally say something quite thoughtful and worth while.
If you care about improving your reputation on this list, it would make you
seem more like someone who cared about truth and reason, and less like
someone who cared more about petty squabbles and personal ego, if you gave
reasons for your criticisms, and if you took the time to ensure your
criticism actually addressed what you are criticizing.
In your post immediately below you did neither.
Ed Porter
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Waser [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 9:19 AM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: RE: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY "THE
BINDING PROBLEM"?
Anyone who reads this thread will know who was being honest and
reasonable
and who was not.
The question is not honest and reasonable but factually correct . . . .
The following statement of yours
In this case it becomes unclear which side is the "if" clause, and which
the "then" clause, and, thus, unclear which way is forward and which
backward by the definition contained in Wikipedia --- unless there is a
temporal criteria.
is simply incorrect. Temporal criteria are *NOT* necessarily relevant to
forward and backward chaining.
As far as I can tell, Richard is trying to gently correct you and you are
both incorrect and unwilling to even attempt to interpret his words in the
way he meant (i.e. an honest and reasonable fashion).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Porter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 8:58 AM
Subject: **SPAM** RE: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND
BY "THE BINDING PROBLEM"?
Richard,
You just keep digging yourself in deeper.
Look at the original email in which you said "This is not correct." The
only quoted text that precedes it is quoted from me. So why are you saying
"Jim's statement was a misunderstanding"?
Furthermore, I think your criticisms of my statements are generally
unfounded.
My choice of the word "reasoning" was not "not correct", as you imply, since
the Wikipedia definition says "Forward chaining is one of the two main
methods of REASONING when using inference rules." (Emphasis added.)
My statement made it clear I was describing the forward direction as being
from the if clause to the then clause, which matches the Wikipedia
definition, so what is "not correct" about that.
In addition, you said my statement that in the absence of a temporal
criteria "the notion of what is forward and backward chaining might be
somewhat arbitrary" was a "completely incorrect conclusion."
Offensively strong language, considering it is unfounded.
It is unfounded because in the absence of a temporal distinction, many
if-then rules, particularly if they are probabilistic, can viewed in a two
way form, with a probabilistic inference going both ways. In this case it
becomes unclear which side is the "if" clause, and which the "then" clause,
and, thus, unclear which way is forward and which backward by the definition
contained in Wikipedia --- unless there is a temporal criteria. This issue
becomes even more problematic when dealing with patterns based on temporal
simultaneity, as in much of object recognition, in which even a temporal
distinction, does not distinguish between what should be consider the if
clause and what should be considered the then clause.
Enough of arguing about arguing. You can have the last say if you want. I
want to spend what time I have to spend on this list conversing with people
who are more concerned about truth than trying to sound like they know more
than others, particularly when they don't.
Anyone who reads this thread will know who was being honest and reasonable
and who was not.
Ed Porter
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2008 7:52 PM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY "THE
BINDING PROBLEM"?
Ed Porter wrote:
Richard,
I think Wikipedia's definition of forward chaining (copied below) agrees
with my stated understanding as to what forward chaining means, i.e.,
reasoning from the "if" (i.e., conditions) to the "then" (i.e.,
consequences) in if-then statements.
So, once again there is an indication you have unfairly criticized the
statements of another.
But ....... nothing in what I said contradicted the wikipedia
definition of forward chaining.
Jim's statement was a misunderstanding of the meaning of forward and
backward chaining because he oversimplified the two ("forward reasoning
is reasoning from conditions to consequences, and backward reasoning is
the opposite" ... this is kind of true, if you stretch the word
"reasoining" a little, but it misses the point), and then he went from
this oversimplification to come to a completely incorrect conclusion
("...Thus I think the notion of what is forward and backward chaining
might be somewhat arbitrary...").
This last conclusion was sufficiently inaccurate that I decided to point
that out. It was not a criticism, just a clarification; a pointer in
the right direction.
Richard Loosemore
Ed Porter
==========Wikipedia defines forward chaining as: ==============
Forward chaining is one of the two main methods of reasoning when using
inference rules (in artificial intelligence). The other is backward
chaining.
Forward chaining starts with the available data and uses inference rules
to
extract more data (from an end user for example) until an optimal goal is
reached. An inference engine using forward chaining searches the inference
rules until it finds one where the antecedent (If clause) is known to be
true. When found it can conclude, or infer, the consequent (Then clause),
resulting in the addition of new information to its data.
Inference engines will often cycle through this process until an optimal
goal is reached.
For example, suppose that the goal is to conclude the color of my pet
Fritz,
given that he croaks and eats flies, and that the rule base contains the
following four rules:
If X croaks and eats flies - Then X is a frog
If X chirps and sings - Then X is a canary
If X is a frog - Then X is green
If X is a canary - Then X is yellow
This rule base would be searched and the first rule would be selected,
because its antecedent (If Fritz croaks and eats flies) matches our data.
Now the consequents (Then X is a frog) is added to the data. The rule base
is again searched and this time the third rule is selected, because its
antecedent (If Fritz is a frog) matches our data that was just confirmed.
Now the new consequent (Then Fritz is green) is added to our data. Nothing
more can be inferred from this information, but we have now accomplished
our
goal of determining the color of Fritz.
Because the data determines which rules are selected and used, this method
is called data-driven, in contrast to goal-driven backward chaining
inference. The forward chaining approach is often employed by expert
systems, such as CLIPS.
One of the advantages of forward-chaining over backward-chaining is that
the
reception of new data can trigger new inferences, which makes the engine
better suited to dynamic situations in which conditions are likely to
change.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 7:42 PM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY
"THE
BINDING PROBLEM"?
Jim Bromer wrote:
Ed Porter said:
It should be noted that Shruiti uses a mix of forward changing and
backward
chaining, with an architecture for controlling when and how each is used.
...
My understanding that forward reasoning is reasoning from conditions to
consequences, and backward reasoning is the opposite. But I think what is
a
condition and what is a consequence is not always clear, since one can
use
if A then B rules to apply to situations where A occurs before B, B
occurs
before A, and A and B occur at the same time. Thus I think the notion of
what is forward and backward chaining might be somewhat arbitrary, and
could
be better clarified if it were based on temporal relationships. I see no
reason that Shruiti's "?" activation should not run be spread across all
those temporal relationships, and be distinguished from Shruiti's "+" and
"-" probabilistic activation by not having a probability, but just a
temporary attentional characteristic. Additional inference control
mechanism
could then be added to control which directions in time to reason with in
different circumstances, if activation pruning was necessary.
This is not correct.
Forward chaining is when the inference engine starts with some facts and
then uses its knowledge base to explore what consequences can be derived
from those facts. Going in this direction the inference engine does not
know where it will end up.
Backward chaining is when a hypothetical conclusion is given, and the
engine tries to see what possible deductions might lead to this
conclusion. In general, the candidates generated in this first pass are
not themselves directly known to be true (their antecedents are not
facts in the knowledge base), so the engine has to repeat the procedure
to see what possible deductions might lead to the candidates being true.
The process is repeated until it bottoms out in known facts that are
definitely true or false, or until the knowledge base is exhausted, or
until the end of the universe, or until the engine imposes a cutoff
(this one of the most common results).
The two procedures are quite fundamentally different.
Richard Loosemore
Furthermore, Shruiti, does not use multi-level compositional hierarchies
for
many of its patterns, and it only uses generalizational hierarchies for
slot
fillers, not for patterns. Thus, it does not many of the general
reasoning
capabilities that are necessary for NL understanding.... Much of the
spreading
activation in a more general purpose AGI would be up and down
compositional
and generaliztional hiearachies, which is not necessarily forward or
backward chaining, but which is important in NL understanding. So I agree
that simple forward and backward chaining are not enough to solve general
inferences problems of any considerable complexity.
-----------------------------------
Can you describe some of the kinds of systems that you think would be
necessary for complex inference problems. Do you feel that all AGI
problems (other than those technical problems that would be common to a
variety of complicated programs that use large data bases) are
essentially inference problems? Is your use of the term inference here
intended to be inclusive of the various kinds of problems that would
have to be dealt with or are you referring to a class of problems which
are inferential in the more restricted sense of the term? (I feel that
the two senses of the term are both legitimate, I am just a little
curious about what it was that you were saying.)
I only glanced at a couple of papers about SHRUTI, and I may be looking
at a different paper than you were talking about, but looking at the
website it looks like you were talking about a connectionist model. Do
you think a connectionist model (probabilistic or not) is necessary for
AGI. In other words, I think a lot of us agree that some kind of
complex (or complicated) system of interrelated data is necessary for
AGI and this does correspond to a network of some kind, but these are
not necessarily connectionist.
What were you thinking of when you talked about multi-level
compositional hierarchies that you suggested were necessary for general
reasoning?
If I understood what you were saying, you do not think that activation
synchrony is enough to create insightful binding given the complexities
that are necessary for higher level (or more sophisticated) reasoning.
On the other hand you did seem to suggest that temporal synchrony spread
across a rhythmic flux of relational knowledge of might be useful for
detecting some significant aspects during learning. What do you think?
I guess what I am getting at is I would like you to make some
speculations about the kinds of systems that could work with complicated
reasoning problems. How would you go about solving the binding problem
that you have been talking about? (I haven't read the paper that I
think you were referring to and I only glanced at one paper on SHRUTI
but I am pretty sure that I got enough of what was being discussed to
talk about it.)
Jim Bromer
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