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08 May Three-Dimensional Model of Language

Syntax Morphology Tense

Topographical maps of concepts in a text provide useful views of language. Fortuna et al in Semantic Knowledge Management (pp. 155-169) describe how three-dimensional topic maps can both give meaningful insights into clusters of related content, such as news stories or published papers. I have frequently stressed the importance of concept associations in the brain, in cognitive […]

07 May Pairs of Language Strata

Domain Concept Symbol Idea

The Paired Model By pairing language strata, we attempt to find or describe symmetrical structures in language, thus helping clarify one of the most abstract phenomena known to man: verbal communication. This pairing of characteristics is also useful in decomposing the problem into smaller chunks to make it easier for computers to deal with. A note […]

06 May Impulse Waves in Layers

Waves

Layered Model Just as the brain has areas with three to six distinct layers, a typical artificial neural systems (ANS) also has several layers. The example at right shows a network with three layers that illustrate a neural network‘s distributed architecture. The uniform circles connected by lines are symbolic of the state of an ANS at […]

05 May Learning from Errors

Error

If at first you don’t succeed, try – try again. Humans are pretty good at learning from our mistakes. In fact, some suggest that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Today I’d like to riff on that theme a bit, and talk about ways in which machines can implement learning from errors. Error Minimization […]

28 Apr Mosaic of Concepts

Stereo Vision

KR Mosaic On our way to knowledge representation (KR), we’ve looked at concepts and logical propositions and words and taxonomies. I know this can all be a bit confusing, but please bear with me a little longer. Word relations are more than a two-dimensional mosaic of related concepts – they form a deep hierarchy with multiple […]

22 Apr Breaking Down Language Structure and Function

Communication Functions

Grammar Acquisition Some experts suggest that a correctly formulated adult grammar is acquired by children on the basis of sentences they hear in their first few years (Pinker, 1984, p. 5). The proponents of this theory assume that a young child perceives sentence structure or is able to detect elements of grammatical structure – a […]

29 Mar Is Anything True or False

Three Chinese Gods

I like to use pictures in my posts. The more evocative they are, the better. Why? Because they may trigger brain activity in areas that may be otherwise untouched by my writing. In other posts, I speak of this brain activity as “patterns of activation” (Understanding, Vision, Enchanted, Flow). If we think in patterns (Tou 1974), […]

27 Mar Cognition and Emotion

Emotions

I’m conflicted. I suspect you are too. “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, humans have found it compelling to segregate reason from passion, thinking from feeling, cognition from emotion. These contrasting aspects… have in fact often been viewed as waging an inner battle for control of the human psyche”  (LeDoux, 1996, p. 24). In earlier […]

26 Mar Bayes and Search Theory

University of Edinburgh

What began as a study of belief has turned into a strategy for solving very complex problems.  Thomas Bayes (/ˈbeɪz/; 1701–1761) proposed a model in which adding evidence of different types, or from different sources, to a problem will change the calculated probabilities for the outcomes of the “reasoning” process. We’ve forgotten what he looked like, […]

20 Mar Thresholds in Fuzzy Logic

Dawn in Tampa

At what point does temperature change from cold to hot? Tell a person (or a computer) that the beach will be closed if the water is too cold, and their interpretation may differ from yours. This statement is subjective, as are many of the values applied to the thermometer at right. But if you tell […]