Rich Morin :: tchotchkes

Peirce's semeiotic as a foundation for ontology

John Sowa, an expert on knowledge representation systems, developed Conceptual Graphs (CGs) as a notation for First-Order Logic (a form of Predicate Calculus). CGs are "a system of logic based on the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semantic networks of artificial intelligence". The Conceptual Graphs Interchange Format (CGIF) is being proposed to ISO as part of Common Logic (CL), which seeks to define logic-based formats for knowledge interchange.

I have been following the discussions on the CG and CL mailing lists with great interest (if not always complete understanding :-). John Sowa's postings tend to be quite interesting, if a bit chewy. The ideas in this recent posting map quite well to the ones in Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence", despite some differences in perspective, terminology, etc:

From: "John F. Sowa"
Subject: CG: Peirce's semeiotic as a foundation for ontology

In many messages, I have claimed that Peirce's writings are fundamental to the problems of ontology. These remarks triggered several responses in another forum, and I have excerpted, revised, and assembled my replies in the following summary.

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Everything that is perceived is perceived by means of a sign, which may be just a sign of itself. But more likely it is a sign of just some aspect of the thing, such as an image, a feeling, a change in temperature, pressure, sweetness, salinity, etc. ...

Peirce's semeiotic as a foundation for ontology in Computers , Science , Technology - posted at Wed, 28 Dec, 23:47 Pacific | «e» | TrackBack