Mark Waser wrote:
>> The problem of logical reasoning in natural language is a pattern
recognition
>> problem (like natural language recognition in general). For example:
>> - Frogs are green. Kermit is a frog. Therefore Kermit is green.
>> - Cities have tall buildings. New York is a city. Therefore New
York has
>> tall buildings.
>> - Summers are hot. July is in the summer. Therefore July is hot.
>> After many examples, you learn the pattern and you can solve novel
logic
>> problems of the same form. Repeat for many different patterns.
Your built in assumptions make you think that. There are NO readily
obvious patterns is the examples you gave except on obvious example of
standard logical inference. Note:
* In the first clause, the only repeating words are green and
Kermit. Maybe I'd let you argue the plural of frog.
* In the second clause, the only repeating words are tall
buildings and New York. I'm not inclined to give you the plural
of city. There is also the minor confusion that tall buildings
and New York are multiple words.
* In the third clause, the only repeating words are hot and July.
Okay, you can argue summers.
* Across sentences, I see a regularity between the first and the
third of "As are B. C is A. Therefore, C is B."
Looks far more to me like you picked out one particular example of
logical inference and called it pattern matching.
I don't believe that your theory works for more than a few very small,
toy examples. Further, even if it did work, there are so many
patterns that approaching it this way would be computationally
intractable without a lot of other smarts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's worse than that. "Frogs are green." is a generically true
statement, that isn't true in most particular cases. E.g., some frogs
are yellow, red, and black without any trace of green on them that I've
noticed. Most frogs may be predominately green (e.g., leopard frogs are
basically green, but with black spots.
Worse, although Kermit is identified as a frog, Kermit is actually a
cartoon character. As such, Kermit can be run over by a tank without
being permanently damaged. This is not true of actual frogs.
OTOH, there *IS* a pattern matching going on. It's just not evident at
the level of structure (or rather only partially evident).
Were I to rephrase the sentences more exactly they would go something
like this:
Kermit is a representation of a frog.
Frogs are typically thought of as being green.
Therefore, Kermit will be displayed as largely greenish in overall hue,
to enhance the representation.
Note that one *could* use similar "logic" to deduce that Miss Piggy is
more than 10 times as tall as Kermit. This would be incorrect. Thus,
what is being discussed here is not mandatory characteristics, but
representational features selected to harmonize an image with both it's
setting and internal symbolisms. As such, only artistically selected
features are chosen to highlight, and other features are either
suppressed, or overridden by other artistic choices. What is being
created is a "dreamscape" rather than a realistic image.
On to the second example. Here again one is building a dreamscape,
selecting harmonious imagery. Note that it's quite possible to build a
dreamscape city where there are not tall buildings...or only one.
(Think of the Emerald City of Oz. Or for that matter of the Sunset
District of San Francisco. Facing in many directions you can't see a
single building more than two stories tall.) But it's also quite
realistic to imagine tall buildings. By specifying tall buildings, one
filters out a different set of harmonious city images.
What these patterns do is enable one to filter out harmonious images,
etc. from the databank of past experiences.
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