Re: representing patterns and structures

"Peter Clark" <pclark@cs.utexas.edu>
Message-id: <199411231616.KAA16400@sage.cs.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: representing patterns and structures
To: fritz@rodin.wustl.edu (Fritz Lehmann)
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 10:16:55 -0600 (CST)
From: "Peter Clark" <pclark@cs.utexas.edu>
Cc: srkb@cs.umbc.edu
In-reply-to: <9411230205.AA01383@rodin.wustl.edu> from "Fritz Lehmann" at Nov 22, 94 08:05:27 pm
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>> I dont think we need get involved with Criteria Of Identity in order to 
>> make useful progress on figuring out how to describe exceptional cases to 
>> general patterns, and treat the result as a pattern. 

> Suppose the order of description and exceptions is: 1. Make a circle
> of eleven round holes. 2. Make the top six holes into square holes.
> 3. Change the number of holes in the circle from eleven to ten.  Question:
> How many square holes are there? 

I think there's two separate issues here:
 1. what do we mean?
 2. can we represent what we mean "intensionally", ie. as a pattern, ie.
	without explicitly enumerating all members of a collection?

I read the previous dialogue as saying "yes" to 2, even if there are 
exceptional cases to the pattern.

You're comments address 1; even if we can represent things in an
"intensional-like" fashion, there may be several ways of interpreting 
a natural-language positing of the question. I agree with that too,
it's a problem. But I think it's a problem with natural language 
interpretation, not with "intensional-like" representations.

Best wishes,

		Pete
-- 
Peter Clark (pclark@cs.utexas.edu)	   Department of Computer Science
tel: (512) 471-9565, fax: (512) 471-8885   University of Texas at Austin
URL: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pclark      Austin, Texas, 78712, USA.
URL(research group): http://www.cs.utexas.edu/mfkb/index.html