Dear Lev, Please send me your document. I couldn't open your pdf file, my reader says that it has an error.
Best, Peter ------------------ Dr Peter Andras Lecturer Claremont Tower School of Computing Science University of Newcastle Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU UK Tel. +44-191-2227946 Fax. +44-191-2228232 Web: www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/peter.andras -----Original Message----- From: Lev Goldfarb [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 March 2004 05:37 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Paper "What is a structural representation?" (My apologies if you receive several copies of this message) Dear colleagues, It is my great pleasure to inform you of the second, SUBSTANTIALLY modified, version of our earlier (2000) paper on structural representation. You will find the second version at http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/ets2/ETS2.pdf The paper's abstract is appended below. This paper is absolutely unique, in the sense that it still remains the only one addressing the issue of structural representation at a fundamental level--as it deserves to be treated--which is why it should be of interest to many researchers in various areas. Moreover, the concept of structural representation emerging from the formalism outlined in this paper has nothing to do with the conventional one: a structural representation must capture the corresponding "generative history". We would GREATLY appreciate any comments regarding this paper. (We also intend to discuss the paper on the INDUCTIVE mailing list. To subscribe, send the following text SUBSCRIBE INDUCTIVE <FIRSTNAME> <LASTNAME> to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) Best regards, Lev Goldfarb Faculty of Computer Science University of New Brunswick 540 Windsor Street Fredericton, N.B., E3B 5A3 Canada http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb *************************************************************** What is a structural representation? Second version Lev Goldfarb, David Gay, Oleg Golubitsky, Dmitry Korkin Faculty of Computer Science UNB, Fredericton Canada Abstract We outline a formalism for "structural", or "symbolic", representation, the necessity of which is acutely felt in all sciences. One can develop an initial intuitive understanding of the proposed representation by simply generalizing the process of construction of natural numbers: replace the identical structureless units out of which numbers are built by several structural ones, attached consecutively. Now, however, the resulting constructions embody the corresponding formative/generative histories, since we can see what was attached and when. The concept of class representation--which inspired and directed the development of this formalism--differs radically from the known concepts of class. Indeed, the evolving transformation system (ETS) formalism proposed here is the first one developed to support that concept; a class representation is a finite set of weighted and interrelated transformations ("structural segments"), out of which class elements are built. The formalism allows for a very natural introduction of representational levels: a next-level unit corresponds to a class representation at the previous level. We introduce the concept of "intelligent process", which provides a suitable scientific environment for the investigation of structural representation. This process is responsible for the actual construction of levels and of representations at those levels; conventional "learning" and "recognition" processes are integrated into this process, which operates in an unsupervised mode. Together with the concept of structural representation, this leads to the delineation of a new field--inductive informatics--which is intended as a rival to conventional information processing paradigms. >From the point of view of the ETS formalism, classical discrete "representations" (strings, graphs) now appear as incomplete special cases at best, the proper "completion" of which should incorporate corresponding generative histories (e.g. those of strings or graphs). **************************************************************
