Overview
By Richard Weyhrauch

This note is called: [OVERVIEW]
The notations used in this note is described in [NOTATION]
Under development

My goal is to build an artifact that can think. This goal drives everything I am currently working on. This bote discusses my understanding of what this entails.

To repeat myself:

GOAL: to build an artifact that can think

I use the slogan 'an artifact that think' to engender a mental image of a thing that exists in our world and, at the very least, whose interact with us is sufficiently rich that we will be willing to call it both knowlegdgeable ans even intelligent. This is a strong requirement because it includes at least as good an understanding of its world as a young human child (let's say a five year old). In fact, at a more adult level we might ask if we could imagine ourselve hireing it as an assistant: could it fill out an application; could I send it to the library to get a book; or maybe ask it to read a paper and deliver to me a summary.

I will call the part of it that thinks its head. Thus I will say things like 'I wanty to build a head'. or 'What is in its head'. There are three ideas that drive my thoughts.

Structural Similarity

Structural similarity is the belief that the organization of the mind is essentially the same throughout our species. Accordingly, an [agent]s model of other [agent]s have the same structure, but certainly not the same content, as an [agent]s model of itself. This principle is employed at all levels, and hence the model that the user is believed to have about an [agent] has the same structure as [agent]s model of the user. However, an [agent]s model of itself need not be the entirety of the [agent] -- for instance, its model of its "mental" processes may be different from the set of actual processes that comprise it.

Solipsism

Heads are finite

As an artifact in the world it must have finite extent. After thinking about it this may seem like a trivial observation, but in fact it has profound consequences.

With this in mind, the system was designed from an "egocentric" standpoint -- from Fred's view of the world. This approach is appropriate when one's goal is to construct an [agent] that can perform in real situations and can use perception. The opposite approach, one I attribute to logic, is to describe people from the "outside". In this vein, we see some researchers in Artificial Intelligence, following philosophers of logic, attempt to characterize "knowledge" by incorporating both concepts in the mind and objects in the real world into their formalisms.

Properties of Heads

Our goal requires us to understand what might be used to build a head and what things the head knows about.

Heads contain mental images.

Heads cannot be modeled by theories

  • heads are finite
  • heads are updatable

§ x.The development of ideas

  • just mental moidels of things - nou=ns
  • Classification
  • new types of classification numbers/counting
  • naming/language
  • classes of objects (as an abject)
  • theories
  • relations
  • parts of speach (eg verbs)
  • attributes/adjectives
  • attributes of verbs (adverbs)
    Is there a history of parts of speach?
  • abstract notions
    eg, love pain, racissm, ...
    words fo these? meta theory - Meet Fred
  • new things and view
    new things and new meta theory
  • scienticic method
  • practical computation
  • sets

is this analysis new> - places to look

  • Child developmewnt
  • History of language
  • history of ideas

The purpose of education

  • To transmit mental images of society
  • shortcut the need for reinvention
  • the invention of education
  • writing - books - computers

§ x.

What is language?