Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1.6.
Some beliefs as a network
was
in
, ... ...
George
born
Boston
Fred
is the only
of
and
son Mary
child
of someone is a
who is
A
adult
male
is an
A
man
person
is a
who has never been
A
bachelor
marriage
contract
married
is a
. . .
A
. . . said to be
additional facts were added about how parents hope their children end up happily
married, one could go in that direction. (Or one might want to include facts about
what a bachelor lifestyle is like and get additional entailments about George that
would fit into a party setting.)
Observe that to get this richer set of conclusions, one does not need to know in
advance what the symbols
George
and
bachelor
mean. What is needed, however, is a
much richer collection of sentences over which to apply the rules of logic.
Knowledge bases
At this point, we have to be prepared to make a gigantic leap of the imagination:
Imagine that we can draw conclusions from
millions
of such facts.
In other words, to make a plausible connection between thinking and computing,
we have to imagine that we are considering the logical entailments of a potentially
