Ontology evolution in physics

[John F. Sowa]

As I have said in various notes, I don't believe that a fixed, rigidly
defined universal ontology is either possible or desirable.  At the
University of Edinburgh, Professor Alan Bundy and his colleagues have
reached similar conclusions.  See the excerpt from one of their papers
at the end of this note.

Anyone with a good background in logic, knowledge representation,
physics, and related topics who might be interested in a post-doc
research position on a project in ontology evolution, should see

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3009319
jobs.ed.ac.uk - The University of Edinburgh

Disclaimer:  I am listed as a collaborator on this project.

John Sowa
_______________________________________________________________________

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/publications/online/0836.pdf
Representation as a Fluent:  An AI Challenge for the Next Half Century

by Alan Bundy and Fiona McNeill

Excerpt:

We will argue that attempting to build a general-purpose representation
is chasing rainbows.  The world is infinitely complex, so there is no
end to the qualifications, ramifications and richness of detail that
one could incorporate, and that you might need to incorporate for a
particular application.  This is not just a question of adding some
additional facts or rules; it may also be necessary to modify the
underlying representational language: its syntax, its representational
power or even its semantics or logic.  For a narrow application, it is
often sufficient to hand-craft a representation that hits the desired
sweet spot.  But this will not be sufficient for the deeper and wider
ranging applications that are the ultimate goal of artificial
intelligence, e.g., autonomous agents able to solve multiple and
evolving goals in a complex and messy environment in collaboration
with some other agents and in conflict with others.  For these, more
ambitious, applications, the representation must be a fluent, i.e.,
it must evolve under machine control.  This proposal goes beyond
conventional machine learning or belief revision, because these both
deal with content changes within a fixed representation.  The
representation itself needs to be manipulated automatically.
We believe that automatic representation development, evolution
and repair must be a major goal of artificial intelligence research
over the next 50 years.


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[Jon Awbrey]

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

oh good, they've discovered semiotics ...

o brave new world ...

jon

John F. Sowa wrote:

>
> As I have said in various notes, I don't believe that a fixed, rigidly
> defined universal ontology is either possible or desirable.  At the
> University of Edinburgh, Professor Alan Bundy and his colleagues have
> reached similar conclusions.  See the excerpt from one of their papers
> at the end of this note.
>
> Anyone with a good background in logic, knowledge representation,
> physics, and related topics who might be interested in a post-doc
> research position on a project in ontology evolution, should see
>
> http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3009319
> jobs.ed.ac.uk - The University of Edinburgh
>
> Disclaimer:  I am listed as a collaborator on this project.
>
> John Sowa
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
> http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/publications/online/0836.pdf
> Representation as a Fluent : An AI Challenge for the Next Half Century
>
> by Alan Bundy and Fiona McNeill
>
> Excerpt:
>
> We will argue that attempting to build a general-purpose representation
> is chasing rainbows.  The world is infinitely complex, so there is no
> end to the qualifications, ramifications and richness of detail that
> one could incorporate, and that you might need to incorporate for a
> particular application.  This is not just a question of adding some
> additional facts or rules; it may also be necessary to modify the
> underlying representational language: its syntax, its representational
> power or even its semantics or logic.  For a narrow application, it is
> often sufficient to hand-craft a representation that hits the desired
> sweet spot.  But this will not be sufficient for the deeper and wider
> ranging applications that are the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence,
> e.g., autonomous agents able to solve multiple and evolving goals in a complex
> and messy environment in collaboration with some other agents and in conflict
> with others.  For these, more ambitious, applications, the representation must
> be a fluent, i.e., it must evolve under machine control.  This proposal goes
> beyond conventional machine learning or belief revision, because these both
> deal with content changes within a fixed representation.  The representation
> itself needs to be manipulated automatically.  We believe that automatic
> representation development, evolution and repair must be a major goal of
> artificial intelligence research over the next 50 years.

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
mathweb: http://www.mathweb.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
getwiki: http://www.getwiki.net/-UserTalk:Jon_Awbrey
p2p wiki: http://www.p2pfoundation.net/User:JonAwbrey
planet math: http://planetmath.org/?op=userobjs;id=15246
zhongwen wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
ontolog: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?JonAwbrey
http://www.altheim.com/ceryle/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JonAwbrey
wp review: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=5619
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


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[John F. Sowa]

Jon,

Yes, but a lot of people haven't.

JA> oh good, they've discovered semiotics ...
 >
 > o brave new world ...

For anyone who is interested in semiotics, following is a notice
about the _Bulletin of Semiotix_.  The current issue also contains
an article by Frederik Stjernfelt, who was an invited speaker at
ICCS'06:

    http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix12/sem-12-04-2.html
    Danish Semiotics -- an overview

John Sowa
________________________________________________________

Dear Colleague,

We are pleased to send you the twelfth issue of SemiotiX, first edition.
SemiotiX is an online global information bulletin that provides reports on
institutions, individuals, ideas, events and publications concerning
semiotics and related disciplines.

In this issue you will find articles on Biosemiotics and Indexing
languages and
knowledge organization; reports on Danish, Bulgarian and Russian
semiotics and
the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, University of Hamburg; as
well as
the announcement of a new multidisciplinary journal: Cognitive Semiotics.

The link for the Semiotix Bulletin 12 can be found at:
     http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix12/index.html

All correspondence should be addressed to the Managing Editor
<webmaster.semiotix@...>. Reports and News should be submitted to the
Editor <paul.bouissac@...>.

__________________________________________________________________________


Click on this link if you wish to subscribe to the Bulletin:
   http://chass.utoronto.ca/~twysocki/subscribeFromLink.php?id=14485361

Subscription is free and will ensure that you receive further issues.

__________________________________________________________________________


Click on this link if you wish to be removed from further mailings:
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__________________________________________________________________________


With best wishes and kind regards,

Paul Bouissac <paul.bouissac@...>
Editor


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