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I'm currently auditing a fascinating seminar at Berkeley on Semiotics and Information Theory. Mostly we are focusing on C.S. Peirce although we've also explored other theories such as Shannon's Information Theory. As we were discussing abduction, the history of the idea, how it compares with induction and deduction, etc. someone asked me about the uses of Abduction in AI and computer science. He said that he had heard there was some interesting work in this area. I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any significant work in this area?Michael
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On Mar 9, 2020, at 3:11 PM, Michael DeBellis <mdebe...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm currently auditing a fascinating seminar at Berkeley on Semiotics and Information Theory. Mostly we are focusing on C.S. Peirce although we've also explored other theories such as Shannon's Information Theory. As we were discussing abduction, the history of the idea, how it compares with induction and deduction, etc. someone asked me about the uses of Abduction in AI and computer science. He said that he had heard there was some interesting work in this area. I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any significant work in this area?
Michael
Thanks for the reference. I was planning to dig out some
articles from the GOFAI days (Good Old Fashioned AI) about abduction. But
you cited one of the classics, which also cites Peirce as the
inspiration:
JH> Hobbs et al., "Iterpretation as
Abduction", Artificial Intelligence, 1993,
https://www.isi.edu/~hobbs/interp-abduct-ai.pdf
And for anyone who may be interested in abduction, Google the two words 'perception' and 'abduction' for 4 million hits about how perception depends on abduction for filling in the gaps that are missing from the visible (or auditory, tactile, olfactory...) fragments.
To see why abduction is necessary for perception, note the attached cartoon. The millions of photos used to train DNNs to recognize cars rarely include a car in a garage with its hood up. But anybody who has has ever seen a car engine and knows anything about getting it fixed can interpret the cartoon correctly, relate it to the dialog, and (most important) laugh..
John.
to Michael de DeBellis
Dear Michael
You mentioned ”a fascinating seminar at Berkeley on Semiotics and Information Theory.” You were “wondering if anyone knows of any significant work in this area? I rejoiced to hear about it because I began to argue the releance of semiotics to IS analysis and design in the 1960s when the UK steel industry asked me to look for a solution to high failure rate of ICT applications. I quickly noted
1. all ISAD training came from IT mareters, and
2. the “information” was a concept lamentably poorly understood for several reasons, for example:
a. computers were sold as “information processors” when they can only be token processors;
b. the still-popular DIKW hierarchy of computers distilling these magical fluids: mediaeval rubbish!
c. misleadingly calling Shannon’s theory of signal transmission “Information theory”, instead of “A narrowly-focused theory about one important aspect of information”.
thereby deflecting attention from the wider collection fo problems. I created new courses on ISAD giving equal weight to IT and social organisation and began to look for a sound science of Organisations as the Real Information Systems, beginning by demanding: Show me some information and its properties.
That led me to Peirce, of course, and the 2 millennia of relevant work preceding him. These rich resoources produced a set of six groups of properties of sign-tokens: 3 technical – physical, empirical (incl. Shannon’s) and syntactic; PLUS 3 intrinsically human – semantic, pragmatic and social. Those 6 shaped my courses and served as a Semiotic Framework for my book, Information (1973 Batsford, London and Wiley, New York).
After 6 cycles, the government’s NCC with BCS turned them into the national programme (with no acknowledgement). I moved to the London School of Economic’s team creating IS as a new discipline and I began a research programme, essentially on, but not called, Organisational Semiotics, funded by 2 research councils and IBM.
The result is an ISAD methodology, MEASUR, for specifying a BIS or any institution as a system of social norms incluing those governing semantic and pragmatics but in a LEGally Orientated Language, a strict formalism based on statute law. So, when the business IS is speciied semiotically, you have also specified the ICT application to support, in a language that can be understood by people and interpreted by computer.
Early adopters of MEASUR have clocked up 50+ years of cost-reducing, highly adaptable ICT operating better-designed organisations.
I learned a sharp lesson in scientific progress (see Th. Kuhn’s famous book) when the professor of computer science chairing my presetation of these ideas in 1979, stopped the meeting to tell me I “was leading us all into a philosophical bog”. In that bog, I had already pulled out Blockchain (25 years before Bitcoin) and all the tools necessary for a Semantic Web, 22 years before Sir T B-L et al’s famous Sci Am paper.
So I rejoice at your news. UC Berkley have entered my favourite philosophical bog, In the IFIP community, 10 years of discussion in its TC8;1 task group FRISCO, allowed me to make the case for Organisational Semiotics, which now appears among IFIP’s events.
The potential for this scientific field is exciting. Sadly, it seems to cause more irritation than thought in the mechanistically-inclined thinkers. We need to unify the technical and social aspects and semiotics offers a basis.
My book Information (subtitle: in Business and Admin) is out of print. If there is interest, I can make it available.
Although MEASUR is now risk-free, I’m looking for more daring organisations willing to put it to the test. Having discovered that new ideas only get recognition as a threat, therefore to be suppressed, if they call for a new paradigm. Th Kuhn had made that clear, but I never expected the fierce reaction of the devotees to the Information Flow paradigm (UML etc.) which FW Taylor introducd in the 1890s. Our new, Information Paradigm, acknowledges the social norms, which, like a magnetic force, determine what info should flow where.
Regards to you an fellow Ontologger
“” “
Mostly we are focusing on C.S. Peirce although we've also explored other theories such as Shannon's Information Theory. As we were discussing abduction, the history of the idea, how it compares with induction and deduction, etc. someone asked me about the uses of Abduction in AI and computer science. He said that he had heard there was some interesting work in this area. I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any significant work in this area?
Michael
Simons Institute for
the Theory of Computing
121 Calvin Lab #2190
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2190
On 9 Mar 2020, at 22:11, Michael DeBellis <mdebe...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm currently auditing a fascinating seminar at Berkeley on Semiotics and Information Theory. Mostly we are focusing on C.S. Peirce although we've also explored other theories such as Shannon's Information Theory. As we were discussing abduction, the history of the idea, how it compares with induction and deduction, etc. someone asked me about the uses of Abduction in AI and computer science. He said that he had heard there was some interesting work in this area. I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any significant work in this area?Michael