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Programming a Syntactic "Semantic" Machine
Is it feasible?

Programming a Syntactic "Semantic" Machine

Aetixintro
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Posted 07/04/09 - 05:17 AM: Subject: Programming a Syntactic "Semantic" Machine	#1
With this thread, I want to throw in a vote for those programmers, perhaps also myself, who are aggressive on the approach to emulate the human capacity for semantic reasoning. This may be seen as a criticism of Searle's philosophy so I therefore choose to post it in the Philosophy of Language section as opposed to the Logic section. In a sense, this represents an analysis, necessarily perhaps, of semantics. For now the idea looks like an alien. I'll try to make it more clear as we go of the direction I think this idea takes us. It's inherent in this position that semantics may be expressible in syntactics. I don't know the contemporary status of this, but I have the feeling I'll be attacked and that it'll be exciting. As this may be seen as a money-activity, I'll make the answers rather limited as I don't want to throw in so much resources in doing significant parts of the job. I'll try to argue for the possibility in principle and I don't want people to hold anything back. Of course, if you feel that your efforts are more useful in your daily (programming) work, I don't blame you. I hope we can discuss this and see if the position breaks down or builds up. As before, I'll be back with more. I've come to this idea just a short while ago so I hope you bear with me. Cheers!
Efficacy of "for since it is at present manifest to me that even bodies are not properly known by the senses nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the understanding alone" - Descartes, Meditation II I'm always wanting more, Anything I haven't got, Everything, I want it all, I just can't stop - The Cure, Want

Hanover
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Posted 07/04/09 - 07:14 AM:	#2
Aetixintro wrote: With this thread, I want to throw in a vote for those programmers, perhaps also myself, who are aggressive on the approach to emulate the human capacity for semantic reasoning. Let's begin with your word choice here of "emulate." Do you mean to (1) imitate or to (2) duplicate? The distinction may be irrelevant pragmatically in that you may have a program that does exactly as humans would do under similar conditions, but it is relevant from a philosophical perspective because imitation would not necessarily require the creation of a conscious. The problem you will always have in trying to program a computer with sytactical commands so that it can seemingly understand semantics is that semantic requires "understanding." Without an ability to comprehend, the computer must be programmed in a seemingly infinite number of ways because there are so many different ways to say the same thing. Also, a computer must be able to subtract out the irrelevant portions of any statement and respond to the matter at hand.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House" "I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them." G.W. Bush

Aetixintro
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Posted 07/04/09 - 07:30 AM:	#3
I see you're here so I'll be quick. When I look up "emulate" on Dictionary.com it returns, among several, "imitate" and "model". Hanover wrote: ...in that you may have a program that does exactly as humans would do under similar conditions... That would be something extremely revolutionary and no, I don't have that kind of a program. You know, I'm not some crazy person. Hanover wrote: ...a philosophical perspective because imitation would not necessarily require the creation of a conscious. Surely, it's true that I don't have that machine that pops conscious beings out of it. Hanover wrote: The problem you will always have in trying to program a computer with sytactical commands so that it can seemingly understand semantics is that semantic requires "understanding." Without an ability to comprehend, the computer must be programmed in a seemingly infinite number of ways because there are so many different ways to say the same thing. Also, a computer must be able to subtract out the irrelevant portions of any statement and respond to the matter at hand. First, I like to be very careful with such words as "understanding" and "comprehension". I suggest we look at these two words and give it proper analysis. For a starter, you may be interested in the Raven Paradox. There's something here: http://t-lea.net/philosophical_notes.html. Two other words I stumble upon are "assimilation" and "association". I see quite quickly that the programming requires "open ended items" as intakes of data sources. I also find the objects may be programmed with qualities so if one focuses on qualities and aspects with the objects of programming, one may take one step ahead in the analysis. The objective must be to create a program that returns suggestions on data from its sensors, a kind of guessing machine. I'm on my way out. Later... Edit: I think there's missing an analysis of "semantic reasoning" (SR). When I consider something SR, what does that mean? What happens in my brain when I SR? Is it in fundamental opposition to "syntactic reasoning" (YR)? So it's very much implicit in my suggestion that there may be a number of "formulas" involved in expressing SR by YR. Isn't this something new? In a practical example next, I'll like you to consider the level of a typical 15 year old. This may represent a lot of information, but you don't run into the problems of considering different 30 year olds who may have obtained significant university training that makes it so much more complex because then you probably have to include all the information in the universities to accommodate all the 30 year olds. Or you can be specific and choose to model a 30 year old math student. Maybe after some analysis we come to the result that SR stands in relation to YR as rhetic acts stand in relation to phatic acts. This may be significant. Edited by Aetixintro on 07/04/09 - 04:38 PM
Efficacy of "for since it is at present manifest to me that even bodies are not properly known by the senses nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the understanding alone" - Descartes, Meditation II I'm always wanting more, Anything I haven't got, Everything, I want it all, I just can't stop - The Cure, Want

Aetixintro
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Posted 07/05/09 - 04:21 PM:	#4
Links to begin with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_semantics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seman...sis_%28machine_learning%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seman...nowledge_representation%29 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/ Hah! Below is the exact same question of this thread! "Does syntax explain semantics?" How beautiful! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/ Edited by Aetixintro on 07/05/09 - 04:46 PM
Efficacy of "for since it is at present manifest to me that even bodies are not properly known by the senses nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the understanding alone" - Descartes, Meditation II I'm always wanting more, Anything I haven't got, Everything, I want it all, I just can't stop - The Cure, Want

Aetixintro
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Posted 07/06/09 - 04:01 PM:	#5
I want to look at approaches. I've been thinking of analogies of search engines. To make searches that way is the semantic input, syntactic approach on semantics. The data sources are uploaded to the net. This information is tagged semantically by the uploaders by what they think are appropriate and relevant. The search engine has a database with this tagged information. This makes the foundation for the syntactic query from the semantic input to the search engine. Finally, the users of the search engine flash through content in their mind and make the semantic choice of words to put into the search engine for their search. The chain is thus: semantics (word, symbol-input) <-> syntax (word, symbol-connectors) <-> semantics (source, word, symbol-tags). The syntactic-semantic machine (SySeM) has an in-built "science", rules world-view. It also has semantics as pre-programmed reactions for the future interaction of the program and its user. It's uploaded with content according to whatever it is supposed to represent. It also has this crucial syntax for making the best returns from its content as is its programmed analysis of what is asked. Colour analysis program - implicit and possibly actual conversation: User: I want to analyse my pictures and movies and see what colours the material contain. <chooses the Colour analysis program> Program: May I see what you got? Please, upload the material! <displays the upload interface> User: Here it is! <uploads the material> Program: The colours and corresponding wave-lengths (and ranges) of your material are the following. <lists the colours and corresponding wave-lengths for the material> Thanks for using my services! Take care! This is the syntactic processing for producing semantic content. Btw, here are colours: Wikipedia and Nasa. To me, this doesn't seem so bad an interaction for a user of a program. Perhaps some of the future lies in "humanising" that interaction is some way. People may think that this is about a relationship between the user and the program. This is wrong. It really is a relationship between the user and the programmer. The Turing-test is also of that kind of relationship, namely between the user and the programmer. I find there may be issues in the domains of questions, categories, topics, basic assumptions and examples of what is asked. To this there's semantics. You know, you have the issue with the trees of information. The question is how to make these accessible with the semantics of interaction and the syntactic processing. Maybe, to be completely accurate about it, one should go with "semantic-syntactic-semantic machine, (SeSySeM)". Edit: I think one can imagine psychological profiles of our "15 year old friend", our ancient Greek servant. Really, I think utility should be the guiding star for the SySeM. Edit2: The uploader: I hope someone gets to use this. I have no clue if anyone at all finds it and I have no clue at all, if anyone, who they may be. The searchengine: I'm processing, but I have no clue what it is. The searcher: I have this word, but I have not a clue what's coming up. All parties faces the unknown and the fixed semantic content is continually in the making. If you make an extensive logic, extensive algorithms, formulas, and procedures, this may capture so many possibilites that it practically represents infinity, the queries may never exhaust the system. Given still, a continuous data feed, the process may never stop, it's infinite. The fact that the intelligent processes are unknown, the consequences may be greatly rewarding depending on the queries, system, and the data feed. The perfect memory of computing may serve the user of the SySeM well. Edited by Aetixintro on 07/06/09 - 05:07 PM
Efficacy of "for since it is at present manifest to me that even bodies are not properly known by the senses nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the understanding alone" - Descartes, Meditation II I'm always wanting more, Anything I haven't got, Everything, I want it all, I just can't stop - The Cure, Want

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