Mark Waser wrote:
Thus, as I understand it, one can view all inheritance statements as
indicating the evidence that one instance or category belongs to, and
thus is “a child of” another category, which includes, and thus can be
viewed as “a parent” of the other.
Yes, that is inheritance as Pei uses it. But are you comfortable with
the fact that "I am allowed to drink alcohol" is normally both the
parent and the child of "I am an adult " (and vice versa)? How about
the fact that "most ravens are black" is both the parent and child of
"this raven is white" (and vice versa)?
Since inheritance relations are transitive, the resulting hierarchy of
categories involves nodes that can be considered ancestors (i.e.,
parents, parents of parents, etc.) of others and nodes that can be
viewed as descendents (children, children of children, etc.) of others.
And how often do you really want to do this with concepts like the
above -- or when the evidence is substantially less than unity?
And loops and transitivity are really ugly . . . .
NARS really isn't your father's inheritance.
A definite point, and one that argues against my model of a prototype
based computer language. I prefer to think in lattice structures rather
than in directed graphs. Another problem is the matter of probability
and stability values being attached to the links. I definitely need a
better model.
To continue your point, just because A-->B at one point in time doesn't
ensure that it will also be true (with a probability above any
particular threshold)at a later point. Links, especially low stability
links, get re-evaluated, where prototype descendants maintain their
ancestry.
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