ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Systems
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JA = Jon Awbrey
SR = Seth Russell
JA: a pattern of recognition that keeps the indexical signs
persistently attached to their interpreters of reference.
SR: Can you elaborate on what this actually means for
a running computer program?
i use this idea in two basic ways:
1. the theoretical framework that i use for thinking
what the learning and reasoning program is doing.
2. the implemented types of relational data structures
that are minimally adequate to support programmatic
intelligence.
in ontology applications, the upshot is frequently something like this:
imagine that you have the usual sort of "ontological hierarchy" (oh),
which is generated by a bunch of 2-adic relations like element/set,
example/quality, instance/property, part/whole, or whatever.
now focus on an object x, and consider the things
that are above it and below it in the hierarchy,
say qualities q and examples e.
| q q q
| \ | /
| \ | /
| \|/
| x
| /|\
| / | \
| / | \
| e e e
now, this is a picture of the world with no observer that takes any part in it --
the "god's eye view" or the "view out of nowhere", depending on how you see it.
let's say we add the notion of a contingent interpreter/observer, who learns
each link at a particular time, may even forget links from time to time, and
so can be said to "index" or to "own" each link from a personal perspective.
in effect, we have now bumped up all of these 2-adic relations to 3-adic
relations, to keep track of the circumstance that a particular link is
recognized by a particular agent in a particular moment, all of which
indexical particularity we can sum up in a single entity and give it
some fancy name like the "sign" or even the "interpretant sign" j.
| q q q
| \ | /
| \ | @
| \|/ *
| x j
| /|\ *
| / | @
| / | \
| e e e
the new primitive datum is a 3-tuple of the form <e, x, j> or <x, q, j>.
intuitively speaking, such a 3-tuple can be read to say something like
"j supposes that e is x" or "j witnesses that x is q", depending on
the modality that one has in mind.
and things evolve from there.
jon awbrey
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