The Knowledge-Representation Hypothesis

Last Update: 8 January 2004

Note: NEW or UPDATED material is highlighted


(From Smith, Brian Cantwell (1982), ``Prologue to `Reflection and Semantics in a Procedural Language' (PhD Dissertation, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Feb., 1982),'' in Ronald J. Brachman & Hector J. Levesque (eds.) (1985), Readings in Knowledge Representation (Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann): 31-39.)

Version 1 (p. 33):

part 1:

``Any process capable of reasoning intelligently about the world must consist in part of a field of structures, of a roughly linguistic sort, which in some fashion represent whatever knowledge and beliefs the process may be said to possess.''

part 2:

``There is ... an internal process that ... `computes with' these representations.''

part 3:

``This ... process ... react[s] only to the `form' or `shape' of these mental representations without regard to what they mean or represent.''

Version 2 (p. 33):

``Any mechanically embodied intelligent process will be comprised of structural ingredients that a) we as external observers naturally take to represent a propositional account of the knowledge that the overall process exhibits and b) independent of such external semantical attribution, play a formal but causal and essential role in engendering the behavior that manifests that knowledge.''


William J. Rapaport (rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu)
file: KR.hypoth.2004.01.08.html