Newsgroups: comp.ai
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!violet.waterloo.edu!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: Unified model for knowledge representation? (Impossible)
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.175110.22654@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Keywords: descriptions, truth, reference
Sender: news@watdragon.waterloo.edu (News Owner)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1991Jun04.082625.13317@hplb.hpl.hp.com> <JJ.91Jun5122616@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1991Jun10.094754.3303@kingston.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1991 17:51:10 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <1991Jun10.094754.3303@kingston.ac.uk> is_s425@kingston.ac.uk (Hutchison C S) writes:
[...]
>My hunch is to say that the physical circumstances under-
>determine possible linguistic descriptions, enabling various ideological 
>interpretations of the events.  What then do readers 'know' about the events?
>How is knowledge in this sense distinct from mere belief?
>
>Any thoughts?

Eduard Hovy produced a text generation system "PAULINE" that generated
different accounts of the same event (a student action at Yale) from
different points of view.  You should consider reading about that system.

The lesson to be learned from that system, is that there many ways of
phrasing a single proposition, the choice of expression is then determined
by what stylistic and political (read 'social') content you wish to
place in the description.  The situation itself (the material state-of-
affairs?) does not contain such information, but the people concerned
with it do have such views.

I guess that if you want to try and filter out how people's views affect
their descriptions, then you'll have to come up with a model that
systematically relates the two.  That's not so much a matter of 'truth'
as socio-linguistics.

				Cam
