29,151 research outputs found
Decrement Operators in Belief Change
While research on iterated revision is predominant in the field of iterated
belief change, the class of iterated contraction operators received more
attention in recent years. In this article, we examine a non-prioritized
generalisation of iterated contraction. In particular, the class of weak
decrement operators is introduced, which are operators that by multiple steps
achieve the same as a contraction. Inspired by Darwiche and Pearl's work on
iterated revision the subclass of decrement operators is defined. For both,
decrement and weak decrement operators, postulates are presented and for each
of them a representation theorem in the framework of total preorders is given.
Furthermore, we present two sub-types of decrement operators
Dual Forgetting Operators in the Context of Weakest Sufficient and Strongest Necessary Conditions
Forgetting is an important concept in knowledge representation and automated
reasoning with widespread applications across a number of disciplines. A
standard forgetting operator, characterized in [Lin and Reiter'94] in terms of
model-theoretic semantics and primarily focusing on the propositional case,
opened up a new research subarea. In this paper, a new operator called weak
forgetting, dual to standard forgetting, is introduced and both together are
shown to offer a new more uniform perspective on forgetting operators in
general. Both the weak and standard forgetting operators are characterized in
terms of entailment and inference, rather than a model theoretic semantics.
This naturally leads to a useful algorithmic perspective based on quantifier
elimination and the use of Ackermman's Lemma and its fixpoint generalization.
The strong formal relationship between standard forgetting and strongest
necessary conditions and weak forgetting and weakest sufficient conditions is
also characterized quite naturally through the entailment-based, inferential
perspective used. The framework used to characterize the dual forgetting
operators is also generalized to the first-order case and includes useful
algorithms for computing first-order forgetting operators in special cases.
Practical examples are also included to show the importance of both weak and
standard forgetting in modeling and representation
What is Computational Intelligence and where is it going?
What is Computational Intelligence (CI) and what are its relations with Artificial Intelligence (AI)? A brief survey of the scope of CI journals and books with ``computational intelligence'' in their title shows that at present it is an umbrella for three core technologies (neural, fuzzy and evolutionary), their applications, and selected fashionable pattern recognition methods. At present CI has no comprehensive foundations and is more a bag of tricks than a solid branch of science. The change of focus from methods to challenging problems is advocated, with CI defined as a part of computer and engineering sciences devoted to solution of non-algoritmizable problems. In this view AI is a part of CI focused on problems related to higher cognitive functions, while the rest of the CI community works on problems related to perception and control, or lower cognitive functions. Grand challenges on both sides of this spectrum are addressed
Synchronous Online Philosophy Courses: An Experiment in Progress
There are two main ways to teach a course online: synchronously or asynchronously. In an asynchronous course, students can log on at their convenience and do the course work. In a synchronous course, there is a requirement that all students be online at specific times, to allow for a shared course environment. In this article, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of synchronous online learning for the teaching of undergraduate philosophy courses. The author discusses specific strategies and technologies he uses in the teaching of online philosophy courses. In particular, the author discusses how he uses videoconferencing to create a classroom-like environment in an online class
Advanced Knowledge Technologies at the Midterm: Tools and Methods for the Semantic Web
The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the authorâs and shouldnât be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.In a celebrated essay on the new electronic media, Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962:Our private senses are not closed systems but are endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very
instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that
they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan 1962, p.5, emphasis in original)Over forty years later, the seamless interplay that McLuhan demanded between our
technologies is still barely visible. McLuhanâs predictions of the spread, and increased importance, of electronic media have of course been borne out, and the worlds of business, science and knowledge storage and transfer have been revolutionised. Yet
the integration of electronic systems as open systems remains in its infancy.Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) aims to address this problem, to create a view of knowledge and its management across its lifecycle, to research and create the
services and technologies that such unification will require. Half way through its sixyear span, the results are beginning to come through, and this paper will explore some of the services, technologies and methodologies that have been developed. We hope to give a sense in this paper of the potential for the next three years, to discuss the insights and lessons learnt in the first phase of the project, to articulate the challenges and issues that remain.The WWW provided the original context that made the AKT approach to knowledge
management (KM) possible. AKT was initially proposed in 1999, it brought together an interdisciplinary consortium with the technological breadth and complementarity to create the conditions for a unified approach to knowledge across its lifecycle. The
combination of this expertise, and the time and space afforded the consortium by the
IRC structure, suggested the opportunity for a concerted effort to develop an approach
to advanced knowledge technologies, based on the WWW as a basic infrastructure.The technological context of AKT altered for the better in the short period between the development of the proposal and the beginning of the project itself with the development of the semantic web (SW), which foresaw much more intelligent manipulation and querying of knowledge. The opportunities that the SW provided for e.g., more intelligent retrieval, put AKT in the centre of information technology innovation and knowledge management services; the AKT skill set would clearly be central for the exploitation of those opportunities.The SW, as an extension of the WWW, provides an interesting set of constraints to
the knowledge management services AKT tries to provide. As a medium for the
semantically-informed coordination of information, it has suggested a number of ways in which the objectives of AKT can be achieved, most obviously through the
provision of knowledge management services delivered over the web as opposed to the creation and provision of technologies to manage knowledge.AKT is working on the assumption that many web services will be developed and provided for users. The KM problem in the near future will be one of deciding which services are needed and of coordinating them. Many of these services will be largely or entirely legacies of the WWW, and so the capabilities of the services will vary. As well as providing useful KM services in their own right, AKT will be aiming to exploit this opportunity, by reasoning over services, brokering between them, and providing essential meta-services for SW knowledge service management.Ontologies will be a crucial tool for the SW. The AKT consortium brings a lot of expertise on ontologies together, and ontologies were always going to be a key part of the strategy. All kinds of knowledge sharing and transfer activities will be mediated by ontologies, and ontology management will be an important enabling task. Different
applications will need to cope with inconsistent ontologies, or with the problems that will follow the automatic creation of ontologies (e.g. merging of pre-existing
ontologies to create a third). Ontology mapping, and the elimination of conflicts of
reference, will be important tasks. All of these issues are discussed along with our
proposed technologies.Similarly, specifications of tasks will be used for the deployment of knowledge services over the SW, but in general it cannot be expected that in the medium term there will be standards for task (or service) specifications. The brokering metaservices
that are envisaged will have to deal with this heterogeneity.The emerging picture of the SW is one of great opportunity but it will not be a wellordered, certain or consistent environment. It will comprise many repositories of legacy data, outdated and inconsistent stores, and requirements for common understandings across divergent formalisms. There is clearly a role for standards to play to bring much of this context together; AKT is playing a significant role in these efforts. But standards take time to emerge, they take political power to enforce, and they have been known to stifle innovation (in the short term). AKT is keen to understand the balance between principled inference and statistical processing of web content. Logical inference on the Web is tough. Complex queries using traditional AI inference methods bring most distributed computer systems to their knees. Do we set up semantically well-behaved areas of the Web? Is any part of the Web in which
semantic hygiene prevails interesting enough to reason in? These and many other
questions need to be addressed if we are to provide effective knowledge technologies
for our content on the web
Artificial Spatial Cognition for Robotics and Mobile Systems: brief survey and current open challenges
Remarkable and impressive advancements in the areas of perception, mapping and navigation of artificial mobile systems have been witnessed in the last decades. However, it is clear that important limitations remain regarding the spatial cognition capabilities of existing available implementations and the current practical functionality of high level cognitive models [1, 2]. For enhanced robustness and flexibility in different kinds of real world scenarios, a deeper understanding of the environment, the system, and their interactions -in general terms- is desired. This long abstract aims at outlining connections between recent contributions in the above mentioned areas and research in cognitive architectures and biological systems. We try to summarize, integrate and update previous reviews, highlighting the main open issues and aspects not yet unified or integrated in a common architectural framework
The Problem of Theophany in Paradiso 33
One widely discussed feature of Paradiso 33 is Danteâs emphasis on his failure to represent in words and memory his pilgrimâs exalted vision of the Trinity. Against other interpretations of this canto, I will discuss why, despite the fact that the language of failure seeks to reinforce the poetic illusion that revelationâs authority is grounded in an unmediated access to divine truth, the theophantic moment ârepresentedâ in Paradiso 33 instead shows that revelatory experience is nothing but a product of the impulse of natural reason to exceed its own legitimate scopeâthat is, the theophantic moment illustrates natural reasonâs inherent tendency to overstep its own limits. Consequently, I shall argue, the poema sacroâs carefully constructed representations of the pilgrimâs revelatory insight are in fact grounded in Danteâs proto-humanist understanding of the authoritative role of natural reason in representing to ourselves the possibilities of our own spiritual and earthly beatitudes
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