| Thread Links | Date Links | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thread Prev | Thread Next | Thread Index | Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index |
Jean-Luc Delatre wrote:
>
> Richard Cooper wrote in:
> http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg09686.html
>
> [snip]
>
> Philosophers and metaphysicians are not going to take you seriously
> if you pretend to tackle the problem only at some syntactic level,
> that is, by looking at the common structure of sentences
> (yet, above the lexical level of character
> codes and XML tags).
I intended to define a representation of the words that were
used, which is syntactic, along with the several meanings
that were used to represent the OAV attributions of the
understanding process. So I didn't mean to imply that ONLY
the syntactic process is needed. I just wanted to explore
a way to represent the sequence of assertions or inferences
that are drawn from the utterance, much in the same way
that the registry is being discussed as a way to organize
the OAV assignments in ontologies and in the IFF.
Previously, I've played with this kind of idea in relating
dynamically changing OAV assignments in the context of events.
Since sentences in a discourse describe a sequence of events,
what I'm looking for is a way to organize the OAV history,
which is the semantic end product of the understanding process,
against the initial sentential forms that lead to the OAV
attributions.
The reason I find this interesting is that it could provide
a sort of IDE for debugging theories of language understanding
against available ontologies, when and if they do become
available.
> PARADOXICALLY that might be the way to go!
> Because, (witness the arguments between John Sowa and Stephen
> Downes in:
> http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg09664.html)
> reaching an agreement on MEANING, even the meaning of
> "nothing" is probably hopeless!
Most conversations are dynamic because people are changing
their word use and syntax to match the understanding process
of transferring information back and forth among them.
So although no two of use will ever agree about a large
dictionary, each one in a conversation maintains a
dynamically changing dictionary. Conversation changes them.
[snip]
> But, are not we talking to each other at this very moment?
> And does not those furious postings make SOME sense to everybody?
>
> Of course, surely not the same sense to everyone, but there
> is some SHARED meaning,
> albeit the "share" could be different and differently
> distorted for each of us.
[snip]
>
> By assuming "similar" meanings of the same word used by
> different locutors
> we get perilously close to the "Cyc philosophy" (identical
> meanings) which is known to fail.
Why do you feel that it is known to fail? Even WordNet
uses alternative synsets for the same spelling. We all
use WordNet words in some of those synset forms, as well
as other forms and words not in WordNet. That doesn't mean
that WordNet fails. It simply means that the complexity
of language is so high that we can't find a simple solution.
This is not unexpected after all the limited success of
every language understanding project so far.
[snip]
> Cheers.
>
> -- Jean-Luc Delatre
Thanks,
Rich