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NL-KR Digest Volume 06 No. 44
NL-KR Digest (Tue Nov 21 16:40:23 1989) Volume 6 No. 44
Today's Topics:
Second Conference on Situation Theory and its Applications: CFP
Pragmatics in AI conference CFP
New KIT-Reports from TU Berlin (Abstracts)
RA Job -- Chart Parsing + Syntax Correction ...
What is a Symbol System?
Re: What is a Symbol System?
Special talk by Hector Levesque
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To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
From: STA II 1990 <stass90%epistemi.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Reply-To: stass90%epistemi.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK
Subject: Second Conference on Situation Theory and its Applications: CFP
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 89 17:49:59 +0000
CALL FOR PAPERS
***************
Second Conference
on
Situation Theory and its Applications
Kinloch Rannoch, Scotland, UK
September 13-16, 1990
Venue
The second Conference on Situation Theory and its Applications will be
held between the 13th and 16th September 1990. It will be held at the
secluded Loch Rannoch Hotel on the shores of Loch Rannoch in the heart
of the Scottish Highlands. Lodging for 50 participants is available
there on a first-come, first-served basis, but with speakers being
given assured accommodations. Some financial assistance is available
to help cover the cost and accommodations of speakers.
Call for Papers
The Program Committee welcomes theoretical and computational
contributions in at least the following areas:
* Logical and Philosophical foundations of Situation Theory
* Application to the analysis of Natural and Artificial languages
* Inference
* Applications to Information Theory
* Mathematical tools
* Critical papers and papers on other topics are also welcome.
Speakers will be selected by the program committee on the basis of
``abstracts'' of 8 to 12 pages. Following the model of the first ST&A
Conference, talks will be 40 minutes in length, and will be held in
the morning and evenings, with afternoons free for discussions,
working groups, and walks around the Loch. Speakers are expected to
contribute their papers to a Conference Proceedings, with final papers
due two months after the conference.
Important Dates
Submission of Abstracts March 1 1990
Notification to authors May 1 1990
Submission to Proceedings November 16 1990
Program Committee
Jon Barwise Stanford University
Mark Gawron Simon Fraser University
Gordon Plotkin Edinburgh University
Syun Tutiya Chiba University
Abstracts (preferably by e-mail in LaTeX) to:
STASS
CSLI
Ventura Hall
Stanford, CA. 94305
USA
E-mail: STASSconference@csli.stanford.edu.
Fax No: +1 (415) 723 0758
Accommodation and Local Inquiries to:
Situation Theory Conference
HCRC
4 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh EH8 9LW
UK
E-mail: stass90@cogsci.ed.ac.uk.
Fax No: +44 (0)31 662 4912
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
From: paul@NMSU.Edu
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 89 21:37:59 MST
Subject: Pragmatics in AI conference CFP
CALL FOR PAPERS
Pragmatics in Artificial Intelligence
5th Rocky Mountain Conference on Artificial Intelligence (RMCAI-90)
Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, June 28-30, 1990
PRAGMATICS PROBLEM:
The problem of pragmatics in AI is one of developing theories, models,
and implementations of systems that make effective use of contextual
information to solve problems in changing environments.
CONFERENCE GOAL:
This conference will provide a forum for researchers from all
subfields of AI to discuss the problem of pragmatics in AI.
The implications that each area has for the others in tackling
this problem are of particular interest.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
In cooperation with:
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (pending approval)
Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence (SIGART) (pending approval)
U S WEST Advanced Technologies and the Rocky Mountain Society
for Artificial Intelligence (RMSAI)
With grants from:
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence (SIGART)
U S WEST Advanced Technologies and the Rocky Mountain Society
for Artificial Intelligence (RMSAI)
THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT:
Las Cruces, lies in THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT (New Mexico),
USA and is situated in the Rio Grande Corridor with the scenic
Organ Mountains overlooking the city. The city is
close to Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands National Monument.
There are a number of Indian Reservations and Pueblos in the Land Of
Enchantment and the cultural and scenic cities of Taos and Santa Fe
lie to the north. New Mexico has an interesting mixture of Indian, Mexican
and Spanish culture. There is quite a variation of Mexican and New
Mexican food to be found here too.
GENERAL INFORMATION:
The Rocky Mountain Conference on Artificial Intelligence is a
major regional forum in the USA for scientific exchange and presentation
of AI research.
The conference emphasizes discussion and informal interaction
as well as presentations.
The conference encourages the presentation of completed research,
ongoing research, and preliminary investigations.
Researchers from both within and outside the region
are invited to participate.
Some travel awards will be available for qualified applicants.
FORMAT FOR PAPERS:
Submitted papers should be double spaced and no more than 5 pages
long. E-mail versions will not be accepted.
Send 3 copies of your paper to:
Paul Mc Kevitt,
Program Chairperson, RMCAI-90,
Computing Research Laboratory (CRL),
Dept. 3CRL, Box 30001,
New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001, USA.
DEADLINES:
Paper submission: March 1st, 1990
Pre-registration: April 1st, 1990
Notice of acceptance: May 1st, 1990
Final papers due: June 1st, 1990
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS:
Jennifer Griffiths, Local Arrangements Chairperson, RMCAI-90.
(same postal address as above).
INQUIRIES:
Inquiries regarding conference brochure and registration form
should be addressed to the Local Arrangements Chairperson.
Inquiries regarding the conference program should be addressed
to the program Chairperson.
Local Arrangements Chairperson: E-mail: INTERNET: rmcai@nmsu.edu
Phone: (+ 1 505)-646-5466
Fax: (+ 1 505)-646-6218.
Program Chairperson: E-mail: INTERNET: paul@nmsu.edu
Phone: (+ 1 505)-646-5109
Fax: (+ 1 505)-646-6218.
TOPICS OF INTEREST:
You are invited to submit a research paper addressing Pragmatics
in AI , with any of the following orientations:
Philosophy, Foundations and Methodology
Knowledge Representation
Neural Networks and Connectionism
Genetic Algorithms, Emergent Computation, Nonlinear Systems
Natural Language and Speech Understanding
Problem Solving, Planning, Reasoning
Machine Learning
Vision and Robotics
Applications
INVITED SPEAKERS:
The following researchers have agreed to speak at the
conference (a number of others have been invited):
Martin Casdagli, Los Alamos National Laboratory USA
(Dynamical systems, Artificial neural nets, Applications)
Arthur Cater, University College Dublin IRELAND
(Robust Parsing)
James Martin, University of Colorado at Boulder USA
(Metaphor and Context)
Derek Partridge, University of Exeter UK
(Connectionism, Learning)
Philip Stenton, Hewlett Packard UK
(Natural Language Interfaces)
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
John Barnden, New Mexico State University
(Connectionism, Beliefs, Metaphor processing)
Hans Brunner, U S WEST Advanced Technologies
(Natural language interfaces, Dialogue interfaces)
Martin Casdagli, Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Dynamical systems, Artificial neural nets, Applications)
Mike Coombs, New Mexico State University
(Problem solving, Adaptive systems, Planning)
Thomas Eskridge, Lockheed Missile and Space Co.
(Analogy, Problem solving)
Chris Fields, New Mexico State University
(Neural networks, Nonlinear systems, Applications)
Roger Hartley, New Mexico State University
(Knowledge Representation, Planning, Problem Solving)
Paul Mc Kevitt, New Mexico State University
(Natural language interfaces, Dialogue modeling)
Joe Pfeiffer, New Mexico State University
(Computer Vision, Parallel architectures)
Keith Phillips, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
(Computer vision, Mathematical modeling)
Yorick Wilks, New Mexico State University
(Natural language processing, Knowledge representation)
Scott Wolff, U S WEST Advanced Technologies
(Intelligent tutoring, User interface design, Cognitive modeling)
REGISTRATION:
Pre-Registration: Professionals $50.00; Students $30.00
(Pre-Registration cutoff date is April 1st 1990)
Registration: Professionals $70.00; Students $50.00
(Copied proof of student status is required).
Registration form (IN BLOCK CAPITALS).
Enclose payment (personal checks and Eurochecks accepted).
Send to the following address:
Jennifer Griffiths,
Local Arrangements Chairperson, RMCAI-90
Computing Research Laboratory
Dept. 3CRL, Box 30001, NMSU
Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001, USA.
Name:_______________________________ E-mail_____________________________ Phone__________________________
Affiliation: ____________________________________________________
Fax: ____________________________________________________
Address: ____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
COUNTRY__________________________________________
Organizing Committee RMCAI-90:
Paul Mc Kevitt Yorick Wilks
Research Scientist Director
CRL CRL
cut------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 89 12:23:46 +0100
From: "Christel Hecht (Secretary Projectgroup KIT)" <CISKIT%DB0TUI11.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: New KIT-Reports from TU Berlin (Abstracts)
NL-KR Digest
Subject: New KIT-Reports from TU Berlin - abstracts -
The following reports may be obtained free of charge from:
PROJECT GROUP KIT
Technische Universitaet Berlin
Fachbereich Informatik
Sekr. FR 5 - 12
Franklinstr. 28/29
D-1000 Berlin 10, West-Germany
<ciskit%db0tui11.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Christof Peltason, Albrecht Schmiedel, Carsten Kindermann, Joachim Quantz
"The BACK System Revisited"
KIT-Report no. 75, September 1989, 100 pages
The "Berlin
advanced computational knowledge representation system" BACK
has been developed as a KL-ONE-based hybrid reasoning system since 1985.
In this report the redesign and the implemention of the system
(in Prolog) are described.
The overall knowledge base language is sketched,
syntax and semantics are given, and the usage is illustrated by examples.
It is a step towards a uniform object description language for accessing
knowledge bases, combining intensional and
extensional aspects - and also taking into account
features known from typical database query languages.
The implementational issues of the recent development are sketched;
algorithms and data structures are presented,
efficiency aspects are discussed, and
the choices made between various implementational techniques are explained
The report is intended to serve not only as a platform for
discussion on the technical issues and extensions yet to come,
but also as a reference guide to the use of the
current system.
Stephan Busemann, Christa Hauenschild, Carla Umbach (eds.) \\
"Views of the Syntax/Semantics Interface"
KIT-Report no. 74, July 1989, 197 pages
Proceedings of the Workshop "GPSG and Semantics", organized by
the project KIT-FAST, TU Berlin, Feb. 22-24, 1989.
Most of the contributions are concerned with the syntax-semantics
interface, which is among the hot topics' of present-day research in
(computational) linguistics. The topic is discussed from many different
points of view, ranging from linguistic phenomena and their syntactic
and semantic aspects to representation formalisms and their special
properties.
Contents: Unbounded Dependencies in Machine Translation (Balari, Bel,
and Gilboy); From FAS Representations to GPSG Structures (Busemann and
Hauenschild); Features for Determination and Plurality for NPs (Grabski);
A Logical Approach to Grammar (Keller); Semantic Emphasis and Case Frames
(Kunze); Functor-Argument-Structures for the Meaning of NL Sentences and
Their Formal Interpretation (Mahr and Umbach); Generalized Categorial
Logic: Lambek-Gentzen Sequent Calculi (Moortgat); The Syntax-Semantics
Interface in a Unification-Based Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard);
Spurious Ambiguities - On the Syntax-Semantics Relation in C(U)G
(Wesche).
Ruediger Oehlmann
"First European Summer School on Machine Learning"
KIT-Report no. 73, May 1989, 60 pages
The report contains the lectures given at the First
European Summer School on Machine Learning (ES2ML).
The meeting was held in Les Arcs, France, from 18th to 28th July,
1988.
Kai von Luck:
"Repraesentation Assertionalen Wissens im BACK-System
- Eine Fallstudie - "
KIT-Report no. 72, May 1989, 150 pages
This work is concerned with some problems of knowledge representation
within the framework of Artificial Intelligence. Particular emphasis
is placed on semantically well-founded formalisms and the algorithms
employed to interpret them. In the last years, hybrid systems as part of
the research in this field have found increasing attention.
Taking the form of a case study, the construction of a semantically
motivated hybrid formalism and the consequences for an implementation
of this formalism are discussed, and practical solutions are provided.
Special attention is directed to the problem of keeping the represented
parts of a domain consistent; inference procedures are specified for
mechanically computing implications of assertions entered into the
system.
Properties and possible weakness of the BACK-system - as a representative
of logic based hybrid systems for knowledge representation in general
- are discussed and potential applications of such systems are
demonstrated.
Werner Emde, Ingo Keller, Joerg-Uwe Kietz, Katharina Morik,
Sabine Thieme, Stefan Wrobel :
"Wissenserwerb und Maschinelles Lernen"
- Final Report of the KIT-LERNER Project -
KIT-Report no. 71, April 1989, 287 pages
Acknowledge-To: <CISKIT@DB0TUI11>
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
From: Robert Dale <rda%epistemi.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 89 17:32:32 GMT
Subject: RA Job -- Chart Parsing + Syntax Correction ...
University of Edinburgh
Centre for Cognitive Science/Human Communication Research Centre
Research Assistant
Applications are invited for an SERC supported post, tenable from 1st
January 1990 or as soon as possible thereafter. The appointment, for
a three-year period, primarily involves the development of chart-based
syntax-checking mechanisms for use in a rule-based system which
detects and corrects errors in real text. The project, entitled The
Editor's Assistant, is concerned with the application of rule-based
techniques to real text for the interactive correction of errors,
ranging from low-level house style issues through to more complex
syntactic and elementary semantic errors. The project, which is
joint-funded by the SERC and the DTI under the IED programme, also
involves two industrial collaborators, who will contribute the rule
base mechanisms and a language-sensitive text editor.
Candidates should ideally possess an MSc or have equivalent research
or industrial experience. Knowledge of Common Lisp would be an
advantage, as would some exposure to natural language processing
techniques. Salary is on the RA1B scale, in the range
\pounds9816--12381, dependent upon age, qualifications and experience.
Registration for a higher degree may be possible.
Further particulars may be obtained from
Dr Robert Dale
Human Communication Research Centre
University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh EH8 9LW
Telephone (031) 667 1011 x6487
Email: R.Dale@uk.ac.edinburgh
with whom applications by letter including a curriculum vitae and the
names of two referees should be lodged not later than Friday 8th
December 1989.
- -------
Robert Dale Phone: +44 31 667 1011 x6470 | University of Edinburgh
UUCP: ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!cogsci!rda | Centre for Cognitive Science
ARPA: rda%cogsci.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | 2 Buccleuch Place
JANET: rda@uk.ac.ed.epistemi | Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
From: harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (S. R. Harnad)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.logic,sci.math.symbolic
Subject: What is a Symbol System?
Keywords: computation, symbol manipulation, syntax, formality
Date: 20 Nov 89 04:39:12 GMT
What is a symbol system? From Newell (1980) Pylyshyn (1984), Fodor
(1987) and the classical work of Von Neumann, Turing, Goedel, Church,
etc.(see Kleene 1969) on the foundations of computation, we can
reconstruct the following definition:
A symbol system is:
(1) a set of arbitrary PHYSICAL TOKENS (scratches on paper, holes on
a tape, events in a digital computer, etc.) that are
(2) manipulated on the basis of EXPLICIT RULES that are
(3) likewise physical tokens and STRINGS of tokens. The rule-governed
symbol-token manipulation is based
(4) purely on the SHAPE of the symbol tokens (not their "meaning"),
i.e., it is purely SYNTACTIC, and consists of
(5) RULEFULLY COMBINING and recombining symbol tokens. There are
(6) primitive ATOMIC symbol tokens and
(7) COMPOSITE symbol-token strings. The entire system and all its parts
- - the atomic tokens, the composite tokens, the syntactic manipulations
(both actual and possible) and the rules -- are all
(8) SEMANTICALLY INTERPRETABLE: The syntax can be SYSTEMATICALLY
assigned a meaning (e.g., as standing for objects, as describing states
of affairs).
According to proponents of the symbolic model of mind such as Fodor
(1980) and Pylyshyn (1980, 1984), symbol-strings of this sort capture
what mental phenomena such as thoughts and beliefs are. Symbolists
emphasize that the symbolic level (for them, the mental level) is a
natural functional level of its own, with ruleful regularities that are
independent of their specific physical realizations. For symbolists,
this implementation-independence is the critical difference between
cognitive phenomena and ordinary physical phenomena and their
respective explanations. This concept of an autonomous symbolic level
also conforms to general foundational principles in the theory of
computation and applies to all the work being done in symbolic AI, the
branch of science that has so far been the most successful in
generating (hence explaining) intelligent behavior.
All eight of the properties listed above seem to be critical to this
definition of symbolic. Many phenomena have some of the properties, but
that does not entail that they are symbolic in this explicit, technical
sense. It is not enough, for example, for a phenomenon to be
INTERPRETABLE as rule-governed, for just about anything can be
interpreted as rule-governed. A thermostat may be interpreted as
following the rule: Turn on the furnace if the temperature goes below
70 degrees and turn it off if it goes above 70 degrees, yet nowhere in
the thermostat is that rule explicitly represented.
Wittgenstein (1953) emphasized the difference between EXPLICIT and
IMPLICIT rules: It is not the same thing to "follow" a rule
(explicitly) and merely to behave "in accordance with" a rule
(implicitly). The critical difference is in the compositeness (7) and
systematicity (8) criteria. The explicitly represented symbolic rule is
part of a formal system, it is decomposable (unless primitive), its
application and manipulation is purely formal (syntactic,
shape-dependent), and the entire system must be semantically
interpretable, not just the chunk in question. An isolated ("modular")
chunk cannot be symbolic; being symbolic is a combinatory, systematic
property.
So the mere fact that a behavior is "interpretable" as ruleful does not
mean that it is really governed by a symbolic rule. Semantic
interpretability must be coupled with explicit representation (2),
syntactic manipulability (4), and systematicity (8) in order to be
symbolic. None of these criteria is arbitrary, and, as far as I can
tell, if you weaken them, you lose the grip on what looks like a
natural category and you sever the links with the formal theory of
computation, leaving a sense of "symbolic" that is merely unexplicated
metaphor (and probably differs from speaker to speaker).
Any rival definitions, counterexamples or amplifications?
Excerpted from:
Harnad, S. (1990) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D (in press)
- ----------------------------------------------------
References:
Fodor, J. A. (1975) The language of thought. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Fodor, J. A. (1987) Psychosemantics. Cambridge MA: MIT/Bradford.
Fodor, J. A. & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1988) Connectionism and cognitive
architecture: A critical appraisal. Cognition 28: 3 - 71.
Harnad, S. (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. Journal of Theoretical
and Experimental Artificial Intelligence 1: 5-25.
Kleene, S. C. (1969) Formalized recursive functionals and formalized
realizability. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society.
Newell, A. (1980) Physical Symbol Systems. Cognitive Science 4: 135-83.
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1980) Computation and cognition: Issues in the
foundations of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
3: 111-169.
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1984) Computation and cognition. Cambridge MA:
MIT/Bradford
Turing, A. M. (1964) Computing machinery and intelligence. In: Minds
and machines, A.R. Anderson (ed.), Engelwood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.
- -
Stevan Harnad INTERNET: harnad@confidence.princeton.edu harnad@princeton.edu
srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@princeton.uucp
CSNET: harnad%confidence.princeton.edu@relay.cs.net
BITNET: harnad1@umass.bitnet harnad@pucc.bitnet (609)-921-7771
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What is a Symbol System?
Keywords: symbol manipulation, syntax, formality, semantics
Date: 20 Nov 89 18:44:01 GMT
I have two quibbles with this list:
(a) Items 2&3: I agree that the rules have to be explicit, but they are
usually written in a different notation from the one they manipulate.
Example: A theorem prover written in Lisp. Another example: The
weights in a neural net.
(b) Item 8: Why is it necessary that a symbol system have a semantics
in order to be a symbol system? I mean, you can define it any way
you like, but then most AI programs wouldn't be symbol systems in
your sense. I and others have spent some time arguing that symbol
systems *ought* to have a semantics, and it's odd to be told that I
was arguing in favor of a tautology. (Or that, now that I've changed
my mind, I believe a contradiction.)
Perhaps you have in mind that a system couldn't really think, or
couldn't really refer to the outside world without all of its symbols
being part of some seamless Tarskian framework. (Of course, *you*
don't think this, but you feel that charity demands you impute this
belief to your opponents.) I think you have to buy several extra
premises about the potency of knowledge representation to believe that
formal semantics is that crucial.
-- Drew McDermott
------------------------------
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 89 17:25:57 PST
From: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU (Ingrid Deiwiks)
Subject: Special talk by Hector Levesque
[[ This is late, but it happened. -CW ]]
BELIEF AND ABDUCTIVE REASONING
Hector J. Levesque
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Thursday, 16 November 1989, 11:00
SRI International, Room AA298
While various models of belief have been proposed in the literature,
properties such as logical omniscience have been understood mainly in
terms of deductive reasoning. Here we examine the dependence of
abductive reasoning on the underlying model of belief. In particular,
we show that the ATMS as characterized by Reiter and de Kleer is
appropriate for the classical model of belief, but that a more limited
notion of belief leads to a more tractable form of abductive
reasoning. This talk is an expanded version of one presented at
IJCAI-89.
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
