On 3/12/07, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm not sure if you're just summarizing what someone would mean if they were talking about 'logical representation,' or advocating it.
I'm saying there are 5 different things someone might mean, and going on to advocate 3.5 of them while dissing 1. For example, what about replacing this:
[Meaning #2] edge(point(4, 5), orientation(3.7)) estimated-depth(point(87, 9), 120.4) convex(line#17) chair(object#33) ...etc with this: [Meaning #2(A)] regularity_A1, regularity_A27, regularity_A81 .... regularity_B79, regularity_B34, regularity_B22 .... ....
To what purpose? My version is easier to understand and debug, what advantage does your version have? So what is the "regularity finding mechanism"? Well, it is not well
defined at the outset: it is up to us to investigate and discover what regularity finding mechanisms actually produce useful elements. We should start out *agnostic* about what those mechanisms are. All kinds of posibilities exist, if we are open minded enough about what to consider.
Of course. That's why we need a flexible, general-purpose representation that can work with lots of different kinds of mechanisms. Where do "logical representations" sit in all of this? In the case of
human systems, they appear to be an acquired representation
What of it? Just because birds are feathered doesn't mean aeroplanes have to follow suit. what
good would it do us to start out by throwing away our neutrality on the "what is a regularity" question and committing straight away to the idea that a regularity is a logical atom
I didn't advocate that. and the thinking mechanisms are a
combination of [logical inference] + [inference control mechanism]?
Not only did I not advocate that, I called it a classic mistake. But we need to commit to some representation. It's like XML. XML gets criticized for not being the solution to all problems, but the critics miss the point: it's only intended to solve one problem, that of every program using its own opaque proprietary format. We've got the same sort of problem here. You agree any system displaying a significant degree of intelligence will need lots of different modules, using different kinds of algorithms, with no way to enumerate them in advance. Yet the modules need to work together (otherwise you don't have a system, merely a catalog). To do that they need a shared data representation. That representation needs to be decided before many modules are written. Agreed so far? If so, what else would you use? Strictly speaking, there is (in the Turing sense) no more powerful data representation than logic, because logic can represent anything. So we move on to pragmatic issues. Pragmatically, logic is well understood, concise, flexible, easy to debug, easy for lots of different kinds of modules to work with. Decades of hard work have failed to find anything better. If you've got something better, I'm all ears. If not, what's your objection? ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
