Hello list.

First post.

Two points.

First point: I recently got around to building quite a few opencog projects 
(and metta / hyperon-experimental from trueagi). I'm however hitting a wall w/r 
to the github opencog/learn repo.

https://github.com/opencog/learn/issues/36

The usual `mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make` complains about two 
things: 1. cc and c++ "skipped" 2. weird target names such as 
COPY_TO_LOAD_PATH_IN_BUILD_DIR_FROM__home_minime_home_cellar_learn_fake that do 
not compile nor build anything. (cf. issue linked above.)

As I am not that proficient in cmake arcanery, I'd appreciate input into 
solving such issues. Or I'll spend some time on it when I have it or find it.

Second point: as far as I get it from the writings of Linas Vepstas on this 
opencog/learn repo and the there referenced .pdf on sheaf theory, the 
opencog/learn repo has or had the aim of solving the symbol grounding problem.

I am a mathematician and logician by training, and, coming from that 
background, it has dawned on me a curious connection with Galois theory. I 
believe it is tied to the symbol grounding problem, and I would perhaps 
appreciate kickstart a discussion on that topic. I do not believe this 
connection has dawned on many people, so I'd appreciate attempting to sketch a 
few points pertaining to that view.

In a nutshell:

Take the task of pattern mining "unstructured" data to the limit of absolute 
certainty. Pattern mining such data in a relational fashion generalises the 
notion of "association rule mining" of Agrawal's Apriori algorithm to 
first-order logic and not mere propositional calculus.

Such absolutely certain association rules are essentially called axioms. And 
the "unstructured" data on which that would make sense would then be 
mathematical-alike structures. Consequence: this is an axiomatisation task of 
mathematical structures.

But the question then is: what inputs does one take in order to perform such an 
axiomatisation. We want to reconstruct not only axioms but also the language in 
which one state these axioms. So we cannot start with a structure given by 
axioms in a language as is usual in mathematics, but we must start with 
something else...

I believe the answer has been mathematically given by Benda 1979 in "Modeloids 
I": one starts with a function that takes two arbitrary n-uples and returns 
True or False depending on whether or not they are analogous or not. The task 
then is to reconstruct a formal model theoretical language in which these 
analogies are expressible (in terms of back-and-forth / Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé 
games in that language). Relational association rules may then be expressed in 
such a context as instantiations of the subgraph isomorphism problem. (For the 
sketch of a conceptual link between model theory and hypergraphs, see Steven 
Vere 1975 "Induction of concepts in the predicate calculus".)

Here is the link with Galois theory proper and not "mere" Galois connections: 
If one applies the above approach to well known structures such as 
algebraically closed fields, which is the natural setting for conventional 
Galois theory, what does these "analogies" and "back-and-forth" games mean ? 
They are the subsitutions of 19th century style Galois theory à la Galois 
proper, and thus permutations of roots making up the so-called Galois groups.

The fact that Galois theory is not merely an algebraic phenomenon has been 
noted by Marc Krasner. He wrote his PhD in 1937 or so on anabelian class field 
theory, and felt the need to extend the Galois theory of his time a bit for 
that specific need. In 1938, he wrote "Une généralisations de la notion de 
corps", with the *exact* same formulation of Galois' fundamental theorem as in 
his 1937 PhD. But this paper performed Galois theory in what would nowadays be 
called arbitrary first-order relational structures, and not algebra ! Krasner 
is said by some of his students to have claimed throughout his courses in 
Clermont-Ferrand that Galois theory was a logical phenomenon and not a mere 
algebraic one.

Galois theory, revisited by Marc Krasner, is in fact an axiomatisation 
procedure in disguise for arbitrary relational structures. And, in essence, 
exactly what has been discussed above: relational datamining under the 
constraint that mined rules are not probabilistic but exact. Galois Theory à la 
Krasner = Relational Data Mining - Uncertainty.

I wouldn't go as far as claiming that this (conceptually) solves the symbol 
grounding problem, as I do not yet know exactly what the OpenCog and TrueAGI 
community fully mean by that. But there is an observation in the above that 
would resonate with such a claim:

If one sets probabilistic issues aside, Galois theory à la Krasner thus boils 
down to the following: 1. Identify analogies of tuples internal to a given 
structure, whether a mathematical structure or unstructured data 2. Use Benda 
1797 (+ some obscure paper by Broesterhuizen + personal machinery with Chu 
spaces) to axiomatise a structure.

Point 1 is what neural nets are good at, in practice. Point 2 is bridging that 
with axioms and symbolic stuff. Neurosymbolic ??

Admittedly, the gap is arcane. But this is what Krasner was working on. You see 
references to Krasner's work if you pay really good attention to the footnotes 
of Birkhoff, Ore, Riguet and al. when Galois connections were invented to 
provide the workhorse to implement Krasner's ideas. I attribute the fact that 
the intention of these people is now obscure in large part to the language gap 
between Krasner in french, and people in the US in english. They were obviously 
aware of the conceptual link, but the only thing that remains in the 
litterature are tiny footnotes in stuff like Birkhoff's Lattice Theory book.

I have kind of developed a framework to make brdiging that gap rigorous, but 
it's a huge pain to write down. It's a category theoretical treatment relying 
on so-called Chu spaces, where Chu morphisms are what Steven Vere 1975 calls 
"theta-substitutions" in his hypergraph formalism. Or where these Chu morphisms 
form Galois groups. Same concept. Different terminologies. It's essentially 
formal concept analysis, relationalised to first order logic. I believe it 
provides the correct glue.

Moreover, that category theoretic formalism exhibits a formal dualism between 
syntax and semantics. In which the following may be said: 1. Reconstructing 
admissible semantics from a Galois closure in syntax (i.e. a first-order theory 
in model theoretical positive logic or category theoretic geometric logic) is 
Gödel's completeness theorem, made effective through SMT solving technologies. 
2. Recontructing admissible syntax from a Galois closure in semantics (i.e. 
Benda's 1979 modeloids, adapted to positive logic) is Galois theory à la 
Krasner, i.e. data-mining in first-order logic. 3. Transpose "syntax" and 
"semantics" in the above, and these tasks are formally dual, and solvable by 
the same tooling if one devises one. (Heard OpenCog's AtomSpace / Atomese /  
MeTTa technologies is kind of able to handle both in a more or less unified 
way.)

My 2 cents.

Guillaume Yziquel
[email protected]

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