From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Tue Oct 07 2003 - 14:25:08 MDT
Stephen Reed <reed@cyc.com> writes:
> On 7 Oct 2003, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > "Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> writes:
> > > Ambiguity exists in natural language because natural language involves
> > > *lossy* compression of thoughts and percepts. Lossy compression is
> > > necessary because to communicate our thoughts and percepts in
> > > detail would take waaaaay too much time and effort, given
> > > practical realities.
> > >
> > > Precise, unambiguous language exists: it's called formal logic.
> >
> > However, formal logic can only speak about objects inside the formal
> > system. It is unclear how one can unambiguously produce mappings
> > between the formal system and the real world.
>
> We hope to ground Cyc symbolic concepts with observed sensations from the
> real world. The amount of discrimination required would be based upon the
> context. The Evolution Robotics vision system for example can learn to
> recognize a coke can from three observations.
I'm not sure that is relevant to the question of whether linguistic
representations of the real world could ever be unambiguous.
-- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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