Re: perfect knowledge in AI

Logic works with perfect knowledge, but that is often impractical. We are always learning and never attain perfect knowledge and out of necessity have to deal with uncertain, incomplete and inconsistent knowledge.  We become aware of inconsistencies (cognitive dissonance) and then have to decide whether and how to revise our goals and/or our beliefs.  Prior knowledge allows us to make plausible inferences that go beyond what’s possible with deductive logic. This includes higher order reasoning for which logic scales poorly, something key to social reasoning. Prior knowledge is here taken to mean statistical knowledge, e.g. the chance of it being sunny tomorrow if today is cloud, and qualitative metadata, e.g. most birds can fly.

If you’re interested take a look at Burstein, Collins and Baker (1991) 

 http://www.bursteins.net/mark/docs/burstein-collins-baker91.pdf <http://www.bursteins.net/mark/docs/burstein-collins-baker91.pdf> 

> On 11 May 2022, at 03:09, Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Well, even simply language and communication andthe simplest reasoning require logic of course,  nobody can dis that.
> But
> a) logic itself depends on other things being true, such as fact checking, There was a great un example once on ontolog list, where the first order logic was being demonstrated (if  fred is a bat and  bats are birds, then fred is a bird,)  that turned out a wrong answer because the premise was false (bats  not birds but mammals). It was a good lesson, showing that the logic is right but the fact is wrong 
> 
> b) there is a  probably a lot more than logic to achieve perfection, I posted an example on this list about the dying woman who, as last wish asked someone to take her urine to the first person who entered the gate in such and such place, who then saved her life. Such a request may not sound logical at first, but probably her intuition was greater than anybody s logic could have been, which became apparent at the end (the first person who crossed the gate was a doctor who figured out the poison)
> Here is the post
> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-aikr/2021Feb/0012.html <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-aikr/2021Feb/0012.html>
> 
> I dont know if that is what DR intended in his reply, but I  would agree that even logic rests on correct and relevant facts, and possibly other things

Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
W3C Data Activity Lead & W3C champion for the Web of things