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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Binary Resolution In Surface Reasoning, William C. Purdy
Binary Resolution In Surface Reasoning, William C. Purdy
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports
Intuition suggests the hypothesis that everyday human reasoning is conducted in the written or spoken natural language, rather than in some disparate representation into which the surface language is translated. An examination of human reasoning reveals patterns of inference that parallel binary resolution. But any standard implementation of resolution requires Skolemization. Skolemization would seem an unlikely component of human reasoning. This appears to contradict the hypothesis that human reasoning takes place at the surface. To reconcile these observations, this paper develops a new rule of inference, which operates on surface expressions directly. This rule is shown to produce results which …
Surface Reasoning, William C. Purdy
Surface Reasoning, William C. Purdy
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports
Surface reasoning is defined to be deduction conducted in the surface language in terms of certain primitive logical relations. The surface language is a spoken or written natural language (in this paper, English), in contrast to a "base language" or “deep structure" sometimes hypothesized to explain natural language phenomena. The primitive logical relations are inclusion, exclusion and overlap between classes of entities. A calculus for surface reasoning is presented. Then a model for reasoning in this calculus is developed. The model is similar to but more general than syllogistic. In this model, reasoning is represented as construction of fragments (subposets) …
Taxonomic Reasoning And Lexical Semantics, William C. Purdy
Taxonomic Reasoning And Lexical Semantics, William C. Purdy
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports
Taxonomic reasoning is used in many applications, including many-sorted logic, knowledge bases, document retrieval, and natural language processing. These various applications have been dealt with independently. Because they have so much in common, a general approach to taxonomic reasoning would seem to be justified. This paper presents a theory of lexical semantics as an example of such a general approach. The theory defines a representation and an algebra for that representation. The operations of the algebra are inherently parallel, making them well matched to the capabilities of modern computer systems.