From: Jim Legg (income@ihug.co.nz)
Date: Sun Feb 02 1997 - 19:38:08 MST
Eugene concludes:
Conceivably, yes. One might try to find, for example, a way of
representing "anglophone linguistic hyperspace" so that all
grammatical sentences turn out to reside on a proprietary
hypersurface within that hyperspace, with the logical relations
between them reflected as spatial relations of some kind. I do
not know how to do this, of course, but it holds out the
possibility of a alternative to, or potential reduction of,
the familiar Chomskyan picture.
As for the "set of beliefs" that is commonly supposed to constitute
a person's knowledge, it may be that a geometrical representation
of sentences will allow us to solve the severe problem of "tacit
belief" [...]. Just as a hologram does not "contain" a large
number of distinct three-dimensional images, curiously arranged
so as to present a smoothly changing picture of a real object
as the hologram is viewed from different positions, so may humans
not "contain" a large number of distinct beliefs, curiously arranged
so as collectively to present a coherent account of the world.
Gene, I want to give you my most heartfelt thankyous for putting into words my life's work in this area. The means with which I express this work is found in the continued development of my Ingrid Thought Processor. Ingrid is in the public domain as non-proprietary DOS freeware and can be downloaded from my website.
Best,
Jim Legg http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~income
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