Contextualizing concepts using a mathematical generalization of the quantum formalism

We outline the rationale and preliminary results of using the State Context Property (SCOP) formalism, originally developed as a generalization of quantum mechanics, to describe the contextual manner in which concepts are evoked, used, and combined to generate meaning. The quantum formalism was developed to cope with problems arising in the description of (1) the measurement process, and (2) the generation of new states with new properties when particles become entangled. Similar problems arising with concepts motivated the formal treatment introduced here. Concepts are viewed not as fixed representations, but entities existing in states of potentiality that require interaction with a context---a stimulus or another concept---to `collapse' to observable form as an exemplar, prototype, or other (possibly imaginary) instance. The stimulus situation plays the role of the measurement in physics, acting as context that induces a change of the cognitive state from superposition state to collapsed state. The collapsed state is more likely to consist of a conjunction of concepts for associative than analytic thought because more stimulus or concept properties take part in the collapse. We provide two contextual measures of conceptual distance---one using collapse probabilities and the other weighted properties---and show how they can be applied to conjunctions using the pet fish problem

Associative search through formal concept analysis in criminal intelligence analysis

Criminal Intelligence Analysis often requires a search different from the semantic and keyword based searching to reveal the associations among semantically and operationally connected objects within a crime knowledge base. In this paper we introduce associative search as a search along the networks of association between objects like people, places, other organizations, products, events, services, and so on. We also propose an associative search model based on the 5WH associated concepts of a crime, i.e. WHAT (what has happened), WHO (who was involved in the crime), WHEN (the temporal information of the crime), WHERE (the geo-spatial information of the crime) HOW (the modus-operandi used in committing a crime). We have employed Formal Concept Analysis theory to reveal the associations, highlighting Hot Spots, offender‘s profile and its associated offenders in a criminal activit

Facets and Typed Relations as Tools for Reasoning Processes in Information Retrieval

Faceted arrangement of entities and typed relations for representing different associations between the entities are established tools in knowledge representation. In this paper, a proposal is being discussed combining both tools to draw inferences along relational paths. This approach may yield new benefit for information retrieval processes, especially when modeled for heterogeneous environments in the Semantic Web. Faceted arrangement can be used as a se-lection tool for the semantic knowledge modeled within the knowledge repre-sentation. Typed relations between the entities of different facets can be used as restrictions for selecting them across the facets