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NL-KR Digest Volume 02 No. 52
NL-KR Digest (6/08/87 22:48:16) Volume 2 Number 52
Today's Topics:
From CSLI Calendar, June 4, No.31
Nonmonotonic Temporal Reasoning, and Causation
June Meeting, Society for Philosophy & Psychology
Conference - Matrix of Biology Workshop
Smolensky on Connectionism: BBS Call for Commentators
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 87 08:47 EDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: From CSLI Calendar, June 4, No.31
[Excerpted from CSLI Calendar]
NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
What Can Machines Know?
On the Properties of Knowledge in Distributed Systems
Joseph Y. Halpern
June 11
Recently it has been shown that knowledge is a useful tool for
analyzing complicated distributed systems. The notion of knowledge
that seems most relevant for this analysis is an external,
information-based notion that can be shown to satisfy all the axioms
of the classical modal logic S5. The question arises as to whether
this notion of knowledge has any additional properties due to the
nature of distributed systems. We carefully formalize this question,
and show that it depends in subtle ways on our assumptions about
distributed systems.
This is joint work with Ron Fagin and Moshe Vardi. The talk is
completely self-contained.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 87 15:13 EDT
From: patricia@cs.rochester.edu
Subject: Nonmonotonic Temporal Reasoning, and Causation
Yoav Shoham, June 25, 1987
A UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT SEMINAR
Thursday, June 25, 1987
11th Floor Lounge, Hylan Bldg.
11:00 am
Speaker
Yoav Shoham
Stanford University
Topic
Nonmonotonic Temporal Reasoning, and Causation:
We define two problems that arise from the conflicting goals of rigor and
efficiency in temporal reasoning, called the qualification problem and the
extended prediction problem, which subsume the infamous frame problem. We
then offer solutions to those.The solution relies on making nonmonotonic
inferences. We present our very simple, semantical approach to nonmomotonic
logics. We then define a particular nonmonotonic logic, called the logic of
chronological ignorance , which combines elements of tempora l logic and the
modal logic of knowledge. We illustrate how the logic can be used to solve
the qualification problem. (In the unlikely event of time permitting, we will
do the same for the extended prediction problem). Although the logic of
chronological ignorance is, in general, badly undecidable, we identify a
restricted class of theories, called causal theories, which have very nice
properties: They each have a model that is (in a certain sense) unique, and
that is (! in a certain sense) easily computable. We argue that the above
analysis offers an attractive account of the concept of causation, and of its
central role in common sense reasoning.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 87 18:31 EDT
From: harnad@mind
Subject: June Meeting, Society for Philosophy & Psychology
[Excerpted from NEURON Digest] [Edited for Brevity - BWM]
*** Society for Philosophy and Psychology - 1987 Program ***
University of California, San Diego -- June 21 - 23 1987
For information:
Program Chairman: William Bechtel (Philosophy, Georgia State
University) phlpwb@GSUMV1.BITNET
Secretary/Treasurer: Patricia Kitcher (Philosophy, UCSD) ir205@sdcc6%sdcsvax
SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 1987
9:00 - 11:00 A.M. SYMPOSIUM: DEPRESSION, COGNITION, AND RATIONALITY
Chair: Evalyn Segal, Psychology, San Diego State University
Speakers: George Graham, Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Christopher Peterson, Psychology, University of Michigan
Lynn Rehm, Psychology, University of Houston
1:00 - 3:15 P.M CONCURRENT CONTRIBUTED PAPERS SESSIONS I AND II
SESSION I: Behavior and Belief
Speaker: Ruth Garrett Millikan, Philosophy, University of Connecticut
"What is Behavior? or Why Narrow Psychology/Ethology is
Impossible"
Speaker: David Martel Johnson, Philosophy, York University
"'Brutes Believe Not': Why Non-Human Animals Have No Beliefs"
SESSION II: Computational Theories of Mind
Chair: Owen Flanagan, Philosophy, Wellesley
Speaker: David Kirsh, Artificial Intelligence, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
"The Concept of Computation in Connectionist Systems"
Speaker: Joseph Levine, Philosophy, North Carolina State University
"Demonstrative Thought"
3:30-5:00 P.M. INVITED LECTURE
Speaker: Howard Poizner, Salk Institute, San Diego
"Brain Function for Language: Perspectives from Another
Modality"
7:00-10:00 P.M. SYMPOSIUM: SIMILARITY, ANALOGY, AND LEARNING
Chair: Paul Thagard, Cognitive Science, Princeton
Speakers: Dedre Gentner, Psychology, University of Illinois
Doug Medin, Psychology, University of Illinois
Keith Holyoak, Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1987
9:00-11:30 A.M. SYMPOSIUM: CONNECTIONISM AND IMAGE SCHEMATIC STRUCTURES
Chair: Patricia Churchland, Philosophy, University of California, San
Diego
Speakers: David Rumelhart, Psychology, University of California, San Diego
George Lakoff, Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
Mark Johnson, Philosophy, Southern Illinois University
Terrence Sejnowski, Biophysics, Johns Hopkins University
12:30-2:45 P.M. CONCURRENT CONTRIBUTED PAPERS SESSIONS III, IV, AND V
Session III: Logic and Reasoning
Speaker: David Sanford, Philosophy, Duke University
"Circumstantial Validity"
Speaker: Howard Margolis, Committee on Public Policy, University of
Chicago
"Habits of Mind"
Session IV: Mentalistic Explanations
Speaker: Joseph Thomas Tolliver, Philosophy, University of Maryland
"Knowledge Without Truth"
Speaker: Louise M. Antony, Philosophy, North Carolina State University
"Anomalous Monism and the Problem of Explanatory Force"
Session V: Subjective Experience
Speaker: James S. Kelly, Philosophy, Miami University
"On Quining Qualia"
Speaker: Richard J. Hall, Philosophy, Michigan State University
"Is An Inverted Pain-Pleasure Spectrum Possible?"
3:00-5:30 P.M. SYMPOSIUM: CONCEPTUAL AND SEMANTIC CHANGE IN CHILDHOOD AND
SCIENCE
Chair: Adele Abrahamsen, Language Research Center, Georgia State and
Emory University
Speakers: Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Medical Research Council Cognitive
Development Unit
Alison Gopnik, Psychology, Scarborough College, University of
Toronto
Susan Carey, Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Philip Kitcher, Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
8:00-9:00 P.M. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Speaker: Stevan Harnad, SPP President, Behavioral & Brain Sciences
"Uncomplemented Categories, Or, What is It Like To Be a Bachelor?"
Reception afterward given by Chancellor and Mrs. Richard C. Atkinson at
University House, UCSD
TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1987
8:30-11:00 A.M. SYMPOSIUM: SEMANTICS
Chair: Richard Jeffrey, Philosophy, Princeton
Speakers: Mark Johnston, Philosophy, Princeton
Barbara Hall Partee, Linguistics, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst
Norbert Hornstein, Linguistic, University of Maryland
11:15 A.M. - 12:30 P.M. INVITED LECTURE
Speaker: Larry R. Squire, Research Career Scientist, Veterans
Administration Medical Center, San Diego, and Psychiatry,
University of California, San Diego
"Memory and Brain: Neural Systems and Behavior"
1:30-3:45 P.M. CONCURRENT CONTRIBUTED PAPER SESSIONS VI AND VII
SESSION VI: CONCEPTS
Chair: Bernard Kobes, Philosophy, Arizona State University
Speaker: Kenneth R. Livingston and Janet Andrews, Psychology, Vassar
College
"Reflections on the Relationship Between Philosophy and
Psychology in the Study of Concepts?: Is there Madness in our
Methods?"
Speaker: Andrew Woodfield, Philosophy, Bristol
"A Two-Tiered Model of Concept Formation"
SESSION VII: INTENTIONALITY
Chair: Douglas G. Winblad, Philosophy, Georgia State University
Speaker: Ron Amundson, Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Hilo
"Doctor Dennett and Doctor Pangloss"
Speaker: Robert Van Gulick, Philosophy, Syracuse
"Consciousness, Intrinsic Intentionality, and Self-Understanding
Machines
4:00-5:30 P.M. INVITED LECTURE: CONSCIOUSNESS
Speakers: Daniel Dennett, Philosophy, Tufts University
Kathleen Akins, Philosophy, Tufts University
BEACH PARTY
--
Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771
{bellcore, psuvax1, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet harnad@mind.Princeton.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 87 17:34 EDT
From: Patrick H. Winston <PHW%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Conference - Matrix of Biology Workshop
[Extracted from AIList Digest]
**************** OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTICIPATION ****************
WORKSHOP
ON THE MATRIX OF
BIOLOGICAL INFORMATION
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, DATA BANK MANAGEMENT, COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF
MACROMOLECULES --- APPLIED TO CELLULAR BIOLOGY TO DEVELOP AN APPROACH TO
GENERALIZATIONS AND OTHER THEORETICAL INSIGHTS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE.
We have today a unique opportunity to merge research at the forefront of
Artificial Intelligence with efforts to provide a new conceptual
framework for the laws, models, empirical generalizations and physical
foundations of the modern biological sciences.
The Matrix of Biological Knowledge is an attempt to use advanced
computer methods to organize the immense and growing body of
experimental data in the biological sciences, in the expectation that
there are a significant number of as yet undiscovered ordering
relations, new laws and predictive relations embedded in the mass of
existing information. Workshop participants will attempt to define the
interrelations of the matrix of biological knowledge, and to demonstrate
its feasibility by applying the modern tools of computer science to a
small set of case studies. This is an outgrowth of a report from the
Natl. Academy of Sciences, "Models for Biomedical Research: a New
Perspective," produced in response to a request by the Natl. Institutes
of Health (NIH). A brief summary and description appears in "An
Omnifarious Data Bank for Biology?," SCIENCE 228(4706), 21 June 1985.
The workshop is intended to introduce a number of young scientists to
the matrix concept and to explore with these investigators the
possibilities of new theoretical developments and conceptual frameworks.
The workshop will run July 13 - August 14 at St. Johns College in Santa
Fe, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico (AAAI
attendees may miss the first week). Participants will be supported with
housing, meals and travel as necessary. Thirty participants (graduate
students, post-doctoral fellows, and working scientists) are expected to
be selected by application from throughout the United States.
Eight groups will be directed by senior scientists:
"Artificial Intelligence," Patrick Winston, A.I. Laboratory, MIT;
"Management of Large Scale Data Bases," Robert Goldstein, U. Brit. Columbia;
"Computers Applied to Macromolecules," Peter Kollman, U. Cal. San Francisco;
"The Organization of Biological Knowledge," Harold Morowitz, Yale University;
"Cell-Cell Interactions," Hans Bode, U. of Calif., Irvine;
"Toxicology," Robert Rubin, Johns Hopkins University;
"Information Flow from DNA to Cells," Richard Dickerson, UCLA,
Harvey Hershman, UCLA, and Temple Smith, Harvard University;
"Peptides and Signalling Molecules," Christian Burks, Los Alamos Natl. Lab.,
and Derek LeRoith, NIH.
A brief description of background and desire to participate, together
with two letters of recommendation, should be sent to
Santa Fe Institute, attn. Ginger Richardson
P.O. Box 9020
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87504 - 9020
(phone (505) 984-8800)
(Applicants should first review the NAS report or the SCIENCE article,
above, available in most science libraries.)
The workshop has been previously announced in other forums and the
formal application deadline is 1 May 1987. Applicants who will have
difficulty meeting that deadline should telephone Ginger Richardson and
notify her of their intent to submit an application, as few if any
positions will be available after that date. Applicants are strongly
encouraged to apply expeditiously so that an early decision about
participation may be reached.
Some representative connections between Artificial Intelligence and
the Matrix Workshop follow, but the list is suggestive only.
NATURAL LANGUAGE: What constraints on form and content must be met for
a scientific Abstract to be machine-readable? It is generally a single
paragraph in a very restricted form of declarative prose. If tolerable
constraints could be found they would probably be widely adopted.
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION: How much of what knowledge must be captured,
and how, to enable scientific reasoning? Is a single unified
representation scheme possible or must each sub-field have a specialized
representation to support a specialized vocabulary and ontology? ``In
the Knowledge lies the Power.'' How can we organize this tremendous
amount of knowledge to extract the power everyone believes is there?
ANALOGICAL MAPPING: How can we notice when analogous biological
functions are implemented by analogous structures? Can we discover and
validate analogical animal models of human systems? Can we explain an
unknown response in an organism by analogy to a better-understood
system? Given an experimental system, description or outcome, could we
index and retrieve analogous situations and/or literature references?
MACHINE LEARNING: How can we re-structure the large existing databases
to automate induction from data? Can we use more knowledge-intensive
forms of learning in this knowledge-intensive domain? Can existing
learning paradigms be extended to cope with the noisy data that any real
application must face?
RULE-BASED EXPERT SYSTEMS: How much of the expert scientist's knowledge
can be formalized explicitly as rules? Could we produce an expert
system which, given a problem or request for information, could infer
which database contained the answer? Could expert knowledge, say of
toxicology, be used to produce a Toxicology Advisor which knew how to
access databases to find answers to questions not covered by its rules?
Could we create expert systems which continually scanned new additions
to databases to update their rules, or at least flag areas where the new
addition conflicts with or supplants an existing rules?
TRUTH MAINTENANCE: Suppose an Abstract always contained an explicit
statement of the proposition(s) argued for or against by the paper.
Could this be entered into a dependency network, with the paper as
justification? Could we then query the TMS to determine, for some
proposition, whether it is generally believed, disbelieved, or
controversial; and pick out the relevant literature citations? If a new
paper supports or contradicts a result from a neighboring field, can
this be detected reliably?
QUALITATIVE PROCESS THEORY: Can an organism be modeled as a cooperating
system of processes? Can we organize this so as to find similar process
systems shared by different organisms? Can we reliably predict the
effects of perturbing an organism's processes, e.g. in the study of
toxicology or medicine?
SCIENTIFIC REASONING AND DISCOVERY: We have the opportunity to
structure a large, continuously-updated body of real-world scientific
knowledge. What form of Knowledge Base would best facilitate
discovering the unexpected regularities in the data? Could a program
(possibly using a dependency network of experimental results) suggest
crucial experiments and reason about implications of possible outcomes?
SCHEMA COMPLETION: Can an experiment be understood in terms of a
setting which instantiates an ``experiment schema''? Can we use this to
group results that are ``schematically close'', even if they occur in
different biological models or in related but distinct sub-fields? Can
we fill in the default assumptions underlying a description of the
experiment and results?
DISCOURSE/STORY UNDERSTANDING: Could a scientific article be analyzed
as a narrative describing an experimental setting, a group of
observations, and some conclusions? Given a new story (experiment),
could we retrieve closely related or similar stories we've heard before?
Could a highly abridged summary of the story be produced? Could several
stories be automatically merged, and an overall summary produced?
This list is obviously indicative, not exhaustive.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 87 14:14 EDT
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@mind.UUCP>
Subject: Smolensky on Connectionism: BBS Call for Commentators
The following is the abstract of a forthcoming article on which BBS
[Behavioral and Brain Sciences -- An international, interdisciplinary
Journal of Open Peer Commentary, published by Cambridge University Press]
invites self-nominations by potential commentators.
(Please note that the editorial office must exercise selectivity among the
nominations received so as to ensure a strong and balanced cross-specialty
spectrum of eligible commentators. The procedure is explained after
the abstract.)
-----
On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism
Paul Smolensky
Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Colorado
Boulder CO 80309-0430
A set of hypotheses is formulated for a connectionist
approach to cognitive modeling. These hypotheses are
shown to be incompatible with the hypotheses embodied
in traditional cognitive models. The connectionist
models considered are massively parallel numerical com-
putational systems that are a kind of continuous dynam-
ical system. The numerical values in the system
correspond semantically to fine-grained features below
the level of the concepts used to describe the task
domain. The level of analysis is intermediate between
that of symbolic cognitive models and neural models.
The explanations of behavior provided are like those in
traditional physical sciences, unlike the explanations
provided by symbolic models.
Higher-level analyses of these connectionist models
reveal subtle relations to symbolic models. Fundamen-
tally parallel connectionist memory and linguistic
processes are hypothesized to give rise to processes
that are describable at a higher level as sequential
rule application. At the lower level, computation has
the character of massively parallel satisfaction of
numerical constraints; at the higher level this can
lead to competence characterizable by hard rules. Per-
formance will typically deviate from competence since
behavior is achieved not by interpreting hard rules but
by satisfying soft constraints. The result is a picture
in which traditional and connectionist theoretical con-
structs collaborate intimately to provide an under-
standing of cognition.
-----
This is an experiment in using the Net to find eligible commentators
for articles in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an
international, interdisciplinary journal of "open peer commentary,"
published by Cambridge University Press, with its editorial office in
Princeton NJ.
The journal publishes important and controversial interdisciplinary
articles in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, cognitive science,
artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy. Articles are
rigorously refereed and, if accepted, are circulated to a large number
of potential commentators around the world in the various specialties
on which the article impinges. Their 1000-word commentaries are then
co-published with the target article as well as the author's response
to each. The commentaries consist of analyses, elaborations,
complementary and supplementary data and theory, criticisms and
cross-specialty syntheses.
Commentators are selected by the following means: (1) BBS maintains a
computerized file of over 3000 BBS Associates; the size of this group
is increased annually as authors, referees, commentators and nominees
of current Associates become eligible to become Associates. Many
commentators are selected from this list. (2) The BBS editorial office
does informal as well as formal computerized literature searches on
the topic of the target articles to find additional potential commentators
from across specialties and around the world who are not yet BBS Associates.
(3) The referees recommend potential commentators. (4) The author recommends
potential commentators.
We now propose to add the following source for selecting potential
commentators: The abstract of the target article will be posted in the
relevant newsgroups on the net. Eligible individuals who judge that they
would have a relevant commentary to contribute should contact the editor at
the e-mail address indicated at the bottom of this message, or should
write by normal mail to:
Stevan Harnad
Editor
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
20 Nassau Street, Room 240
Princeton NJ 08542
(phone: 609-921-7771)
"Eligibility" usually means being an academically trained professional
contributor to one of the disciplines mentioned earlier, or to related
academic disciplines. The letter should indicate the candidate's
general qualifications as well as their basis for wishing to serve as
commentator for the particular target article in question. It is
preferable also to enclose a Curriculum Vitae. (This self-nomination
format may also be used by those who wish to become BBS Associates,
but they must also specify a current Associate who knows their work
and is prepared to nominate them; where no current Associate is known
by the candidate, the editorial office will send the Vita to
approporiate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to
nominate the candidate.)
BBS has rapidly become a widely read read and highly influential forum in the
biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. A recent recalculation of BBS's
"impact factor" (ratio of citations to number of articles) in the
American Psychologist [41(3) 1986] reports that already in its fifth year of
publication (1982) BBS's impact factor had risen to become the highest of
all psychology journals indexed as well as 3rd highest of all 1300 journals
indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and 50th of all 3900 journals
indexed in the Science Citation index, which indexes all the scientific
disciplines.
Potential commentators should send their names, addresses, a description of
their general qualifications and their basis for seeking to comment on
this target article in particular to the address indicated earlier or
to the following e-mail address:
{seismo, psuvax1, bellcore, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet harnad@mind.princeton.edu
[Subscription information is available from Harry Florentine at
Cambridge University Press: 800-221-4512]
--
Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771
{bellcore, psuvax1, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet harnad@mind.Princeton.EDU
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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