rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) (04/21/89)
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
and
GRADUATE RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES
PRESENT
JON BARWISE
Director, Symbolic Systems Program,
Department of Philosophy,
and
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University
TOWARD A NEW MODEL OF REASONING
This lecture, reporting joint work of John Etchemendy and the speaker,
will discuss a new mathematical model of inference and reasoning. Our
basic idea is that reasoning generally consists of the manipulation of
_information_, not linguistic symbols. Language is just one of the many
forms in which information can be couched. Visual images, for example
in the form of diagrams or visual scenes of real-world objects, are
other forms. Valid inference is the general process of extracting new
information from information given or already obtained from a variety of
sources, including both linguistic and visual. We think this is the way
to think about reasoning in most situations, even in cases which seem,
on the face of it, very symbolic, like mathematics.
There are two novel features of our approach. One is the handling of
information that is presented to us in more than one form. The other is
that our approach is neutral between the two competing paradigms: rea-
soning as deduction, and reasoning as model building (Johnson-Laird).
We are developing a mathematical theory of inference based on this idea,
as well as a computer program for teaching reasoning that is based on
these ideas. The talk will present a discussion of the theory and a
demo of a mock-up of the program.
Monday, April 24, 1989
4:00 P.M.
684 Baldy Hall, Amherst Campus
There will be an evening discussion at 8:00 P.M.
at Lynne Hewitt's house, 239 Huntington Ave. (ground floor), Buffalo.
Contact Nick Goodman, Dept. of Mathematics, 716-831-3179, or Bill Rapa-
port, Dept. of Computer Science, 716-636-3193, for further information.