Calculus for commonsense?

What is commonsense?
Short and simple explanation : 
Suppose you have a data D. And commonsense says that it means D'. What is this D'?

Convert D into a visual medium. There will be several ways to describe the visual i.e. effectively D. Each of those descriptions will involve slightly many different words, coming from the visual "scene". Each of those will be samples of D'!

This is different from "just another way to say the same thing" and is actually a case of "data meaning something", and is supported by a cognitive processing step in between - namely, the 'visualisation'. Strictly speaking, this is Commonsense Meaning (and not just 'common sense' in general).

Also, each of these D's will also, strictly speaking, imply something, involving mostly the same words in that particular D'. That will keep it "close" to that D' and related to that D'. Lets call it D''. These will be the commonsensical implications from D. (Like 'John giving a gift to Jack (D)' commonsensically implying that 'Jack became happy (D'')'). 

Example : 

A is holding a ball - D.

1. A's fingers are gripping the ball - D'.

2. A's palm was touching encompassingly the ball - D'.(There will be many D's).

D'' of 1 is 'A's fingers were touching the ball' which is a commonsense implication of D.

The above also highlights the difference between 'meaning' and 'implication' via the explanations of commonsense meaning and commonsense implication. 

Can we use Calculus to represent Common Sense implications where the fundamental conventional differential 'dx' is the implicative thought addendum to X, supported cognitively by the step of visualisation, which is the pathway from one linguistic description of something to another of the same thing?

Commonsense-feasibility scheme

REPRESENTATION OF THE COMMONSENSICAL FEASIBILITY (OR OTHERWISE) OF A PROPOSITION

We are encountered with statements like these in research literature on Commonsense AI - 

Televisions don't eat ice creams.

You cannot make salad out of shirts.

You cannot eat noodles on a globe of earth.

In most data, 2 entities/concepts come together. (TVs - ice creams; salad - shirt; noodles - globe of earth.) 

Here is an algorithmic method to represent, decide & explain the acceptability or inacceptability of a phenomenon (like those above) on the basis of commonsense : 

(The method will become clearer with the 3 examples that follow it.)

Let the 2 entities be A and B.

1. Think of the most basic definitive property of A and that of B. Let them be A1 and B1 respectively.

2. Check if A1 is compatible with B1.

            If not, drop the issue. 

3. If compatible, move to A2 and B2. A2 and B2 are the next most definitively basic properties that one can think about the entities A and B.

Check if A2 is compatible with B2. But that not enough; here is a point - 

A2 is not a “mathematical” evoluent of A1, or B2 is of B1. So the earlier lower levels also have to be checked with for compatibility. That is, alongwith A2-B2, A1-B2 and B1-A2 compatibilities also have to be checked.

And so on. The moment there is incompatibility, the issue drops dead and the phenomenon is unfeasible on the basis of commonsense. 

The more commonsensically invalid the phenomenon/issue will be, the earlier will it drop dead; and vice versa.

Now, let's see this applied to 3 cases - both commonsensically feasible (the first 2) as well as otherwise (the 3rd one).

1. TVs cannot eat ice-creams.

We have TV & ICE-CREAM as A and B.

Which is the most basic definitive property of a TV? One might say that the first thing that comes to mind is that it displays moving pictures. No, even more fundamental to that is that it's firstly, a thing - a non-living thing. When you first see an off-TV, that's the first thing you consume about it. 

So, A1 = non-living thing

Similarly, B1 = non-living thing

Checking the compatibility of A1 and B1 :

Can a non-living thing eat a non……..here itself there is a basic infeasibility that a non-living thing cannot eat anything. So A1-B1 is incompatible and the issue drops dead here itself. 

The very first link ‘A1-B1’ is broken and there is no solid link.

So at the very first level, there is incompatibility; hence the ridiculousness of the proposition.

2. You cannot make salad out of shirts.

We have  A = SALAD & B = SHIRT.

THe most basic definitive property of a salad is that it's a thing - a non-living thing. 

So, A1=non-living thing.

Similarly, B1 = non-living thing.

A non-living thing can be made out of a non-living thing. So there is compatibility between A1 and B1. 

Now, move to A2 and B2 : 

A2 = it is something edible; B2=made of cloth

Can something made of cloth be edible? NO. So A2 is not compatible with B2; and the issue drops dead here.

We might also check for A1-B2 : Can a non-living thing be made of cloth? YES.

And we might also check for B1-A2 : Can a non-living thing be edible? Depends upon what sense you take the non-livingness of the eatable as. So YES or NO depending upon that.

So, we have solid A1-B1, A1-B2 and B1-A2 links, but a broken A2-B2 one.

The issue collapses at the second stage itself; hence the ridiculousness of it.

3. You can use a mug to carry water

A = MUG, B = carrying water

A1 = non-living thing

B1 = solid, supporting carrier

A non-living thing can be a solid, supporting carrier. So, A1 - B1 is compatible.

Lets move to A2 and B2 : 

A2 = something with space to carry

B2 = should be sufficiently rigid for carrying and not spill-worthy (tearable/too thin/loose)

Something with space to carry can be sufficiently rigid for carrying and not spill-worthy (tearable/too thin/loose). So A2-B2 is compatible.

A1-B2:

A non-living thing can be sufficiently rigid for carrying and not spill-worthy (tearable/too thin/loose)

So, A1-B2 is compatible.

B1-A2 : 

Some solid supporting carrier can have space to carry.

So, B1-A2 is compatible.

Then we move to A3-B3 :

…...and so on.

So now we have A1-B1, A2-B2 as well as the cross-links A1-B2 and B1-A2, all compatible. So it's a nice strong robust structure capable of withstanding reality. Hence it is a sensible proposition.

BASIS OF COMMONSENSICAL ABSURDITY

What is ‘wrong’? Anything that doesnt serve the purpose.

I want to open the door. If I wipe my dinner plate on the dining table near the door, the door wont open; that would be WRONG. The one property one sees as to the 2 actions – wiping the plate and turning the knob of the door - is that they are clearly DIFFERENT from each other. 2 “different” things can serve the same purpose; but in most cases if you do something completely different than the prescribed path, you will not get to the end result. (Even though ‘wrong’ implies ‘different’ and not necessarily the other way round, later we will see that the origin of the word ‘different’, in general and broadly, itself implies something that wont serve the purpose of the context and hence would be effectively something “wrong”).

Wrong and right are different from each other.  

You cannot throw an apple to the moon. There are ways to send things to the moon, and throwing an apple by hand bears a difference with all of those instances.

You cannot make salad out of shirts. There ways to make salad, and there is a difference between bringing in shirts and all of those ways.

Quite simply, something what we call ‘different’ in the very first place, is, by connotative definition, what doesn’t adhere, loosely speaking, to the ‘context’ we are in i.e. to the goal/purpose of why we are considering/doing whatever we are considering/doing at that time).

So whatever is “different” from ‘X’, won't go where X is headed towards, or do what X is doing, or look like X, or work or behave like X...and so on. Something different than X won't “fit into” the “world of X”. Its world won't match with the world of X.

When there is no commonality between X and X’ or the quantum of difference between the values of the common measurable parameters of X and X’ is huge, X’ is drastically different than X. So the world of X’ is completely different from the world of X. Making a mistake in juxtaposing such worlds is extremely dumb and absence of COMMONSENSE.

For example, the world of ‘electrical/electronic circuit equipment’ and that of ‘vegetation’ qualify to be such worlds. So, one such commonsense follow-up statement from this (like those in literature on commonsense AI) is that - you cannot make cell-phone circuits out of leaves or fruits. This is a case of no commonality. In the case of a human throwing a thing with his hand to the moon, there is a huge quantum of difference in the common parameter of force that is generated by a space shuttle and the human hand. So that becomes a case of a drastically high difference in the values of the common parameter.

Similar examples of X and X’ could be : 1) Rodents and Saturn 2) skin-tone creams and the cosine of an angle. (And millions such).

"Level" of a WHY question

"Levels" in Why-questions dont just occur in the sense of "chain of how many whys?" That is, one can ask a why to a why and a why to that why and so on, thus creating a chain and thus levels of why-questions. But there exist levels of another kind to a why-question - level of specificity of knowledge. These can be called "nested whys", in a sense, also, like the earlier chain of whys preceding each other.

Consider this conversation between 2 people - A & B :

A: John gave a ball to Jack.

B: Why did he give a ball to Jack?

A: Because he wanted a favour from Jack.

B: I know that; what favour did he want from Jack? When I asked - Why did he give a ball to Jack, I meant that very thing - What favour did John want from Jack for giving a ball to him?

Now, it may also happen that A tells the favour and B says that he knew that also and actually wanted to know something specific about that favour itself.....(which is what he meant by asking 'why did John give a ball to Jack?' in the first place).

This can go on and on, creating nested levels of specificity of knowledge of the reason (which a 'why' seeks to know). This is another dimension of levels of a why-question.

A WHY-question is thus at a "level", in at least 2 such above described senses - plain whys preceding each other, and the level of specificity of knowledge of reason.

This =! Not something else

Consider this sentence - A gave a ball to B.

And consider this question - why did he give a ball to B?

Now there are 2 possible kinds of interpretations of this question - 

1) Why this? - 

Why did he give a ball to B?

2) Why not something else? - 

Why did A give a ball to B?

Why did A give a ball to B?

Why did A give a ball to B?

The above 2 sets arent equivalent to each other. The first set (first question) is not equivalent to any of the other 3 (in the second set). (In the first set, none of the 3 i.e. A, ball and B, is more important than the other 2. All the 3 words are equally important, unlike the 3 questions in the second set).

This shows that 'THIS' is not the same as 'NOT SOMETHING ELSE' ! 

Natural language generation

Suppose someone says - 

1. Who trained the smartest man in the world, to be the smartest man in the world?
2. There are -3 people in this room. 

Now, both the above statements are perfect in English. But they are meaningless. No one trains someone to be the smartest man in the world. And there cannot be -3 people anywhere.

They are untrue. They are impossible in the real world. But they still can have existence in the real world other than the obvious alternative of saying that maybe they are true in some children’s fictional story. And that is, that - someone said them. That provides a perfect legitimate context and background in which they can exist in the real world.

Thus, anything which is grammatically perfect will carry a possible context in which it is “meaningful”. If something is “CORRECT”, i.e. according to some set of rules, then it has an existence. 

What about grammatically incorrect sentences or things which don't satisfy any set of rules? Do they have existence? Say, ‘John apple 5’. This isn't correct English in the first place. But one can say that while illustrating a point I mentioned it as an example and ultimately did type it - in which case, it gains a context of existing in the real world. 

So does anything, that is generated by a language-capable entity, have an existence in the real world? Yes - other than being out of "validity", either out of an illustration/mention or a mistake or insanity/deficiency of the mind. 

Names of words

To delve into the problem of meaning in language, we need to begin with the atomic unit called word. That is, the meanings of words. 

What all has been named, as a word? Consider a keyboard. Consider the key ‘G’ on it. There is a point on it at a distance of 1 mm below the bottommost point of the letter G written on the key. Does it have a name? No. Should it have a name? No. Why? You just express it in terms of other fundamental words as - “the point on the ‘G’ key of a keyboard at a distance of 1 mm below the bottommost point on the letter G written on the key”. But there is a word for the computer screen - monitor. And there should be one. So the question arises - what all should be named? What all should have a word?

Firstly and basically, anything that is quite distinct from its surroundings will have a name. But what exactly should have one?

3 criteria - 

1. Similarity-spread
2. Connectedness
3. Similarity

1. If a certain feature is spreading/continuing over (and/or within) an “entity”, that entity will have a name. 

E.g. i) 'patch' - A patch of blue colour on the table. 

ii) 'arc' - An arc of a circle is composed of similar things (infinitesimal mini-arcs) spreading over it.

iii) 'surface'

2. If there is a set of entities connected to each other, then the whole big entity, till the connection with the surroundings breaks, will be named. 

E.g. - i) 'tree' - stem, branches, leaves, fruits, flowers all are a connected system

ii) 'microscope' - continuously interconnected parts

3. Any feature similar to many things will be named. 

E.g. ‘top’. The feature ‘top’ is common to a house, a keyboard, a glass etc., as in “top of the house”, “top of the glass”, “top of the keyboard” etc.

Are there more?

Why does something like a word exist? What is the purpose of a word?

There are 2 aspects to this and we will see how they relate to / OVERLAP with the above discussion (what all has been named / criteria for creation of a word).

            Firstly, the answer lies in striking a balance between 1) ‘distinguishing for uniqueness’  and 2) ‘collectivism for repetition in usage’. Lets see each of these 2 separately.

1. Splitting something into small fundamental general parts.  

Consider this sentence - John is in the office. Now consider this naive proposition - why can't we collect the words ‘John is in’ and call it a single word? Say, 'JX', and then express things like -

JX park

JX home

JX room etc.

to express that John is in the park, home and room respectively? But what if we have to talk the same about Robert, or talk about John in a different tense, or talk about John in a different sense as regards to the office? Then obviously JX won't work. And hence we need to split JX into John, is & in.                               

Also, the collection-word would have served a purpose if the collection was getting repeated enough in language, which it isn't quite so, to the extent of justifying the creation of the one short word. This leads to the next point.

2. Collection - one short word for a set of things - 

This is obvious. If there is a set of things getting repeated, why keep enumerating every constituent component again and again? Lets have one word like say - office or kitchen or whatever for a “setup”.                   

Here is the point : 

In (1), John, Is and in are those unique yet repetitive parts which can fit  in anywhere where called for. This overlaps with Similarity (criteria 3 of yesterday’s discussion).

In (2), the constituents of the collection are spreading connectedly and in a sense of continuum/repetition over the given entity (collection). This overlaps with Connectedness and Similarity-spread (criteria 2 and 1 respectively of yesterday’s discussion). 

Irrational inertia / Poetic momentum - Linguistic inertia

Suppose you are given this sentence ('A gave a ball to B') and you, in general, start thinking about it - this event. You might think - how did he give the ball? (That is, placed it in his hand or threw it to him to catch from a short distance or.........etc.) 

Another thought could be (about B this time) - And what did B do? Did he take it? What was B's feeling/reaction? 

Now you thought about A - how did he give the ball? (and/or some other things). But you had something to think from - A gave a ball. So a follow-up to this is - how did he give? Why did he give? etc. But B is just a silent inactive agent in this event. There is nothing talked about B / B doing. It is not even stated "B took a ball from A". Still you came up with a question about B (how did B react? etc.) Where is the inertia for that? Where is the pointer to that?       

The only inertia/momentum for this is - 'talked about A, so talk about B'   .......  'A gave a ball (A did so and so), so what did B do?'   ....... 'Something about A; so something about B'............in this tune. Notice the 'And' before the very first question about B.

This can be merely called "Linguistic Inertia" - where the sheer and mere presence and arrangement of certain words brings certain things to your mind upon coming across a piece of data, in a certain pattern/tune/rhythm....etc., so to speak. They dont require "real" thinking. 

Data

All data is created data. It is created by a human being.

So there is some goal, in some sense, behind every created data. Every (created) data serves an intention / a goal. 

When an ad in a newspaper says - last 3 days of the sale ! - it relates to the goal of the writer to draw people to the store.

When my phone has it written on it - 'Samsung' - it relates to the goal of the maker to convey to anyone who sees the phone that it is made by Samsung Corp.

So, DATA -- INTENTION

A very elementary scheme to understand the meanings of simple sentences

There are 3 components - 

1. Definitions of non-small words (At, is, on, the etc. are the small words).
2. The Linguistic rules which the small words indicate.
3. The interconnections between the words.

E.g. - John is at home today.

        Lets see the 3 components -

1. Firstly, we should know the definitions of the non-small words John, Home and Today. John is a boy. A home is a place/structure for staying inside. Today is the present day.

2. 'Is' indicates being. ('X is' indicates the being of X). 'At' indicates the location of the subject. ('at X' indicates that the location of the subject is X).

3.  Look at things this way. We are just given words - 5 words - 1) John, 2) home, 3) at, 4) is & 5) today. The specific order is 14325 - John is at home today. 

Why do we write from left to right, one word after another? This brings with it a certain basic simpl principle in making sense of the connections between the words.

It is - Whenever there is a fragment A from the beginning (containing words w0 w1 w2 w3 …..wn-1), followed by a word ‘wn’, the linear left-to-right order indicates “it is (‘w0’ which is ‘w1’ which is ‘w2’....) which is ‘wn’ + remnant". 

Now, combine all the 3 components above. 

1. Firstly, John is a boy. Home is a place/structure for staying inside and today is the present day.
2. ‘Is’ is being. ‘At’ indicates location of the subject. 
3. Now lets apply the 3rd component along with the 1st 2. 

Fragment                       Meaning

John is :                        It is John which ‘is’ + at home today. 

John is at :                    It is John which is being, which is ‘at’ + home today.

John is at home :          It is John which is being, which is located at, which is ‘home’ +

today.

John is at home today : It is John which is being, which is located at, which is home, which is (on) this present day.

(NOTE :

• Every 'which' applies to the word just preceding it.
• The single-quoted words in the meanings of the fragments indicate that they are from the original sentence. Any repetition (for example, of is and at without the quotes indicates normal English usage of theirs; nothing to do with they being present in the original sentence). 

The above scheme provides a basic understanding of a simple sentence.

What is 'meaning'

 What is 'meaning'?

Something intended for some cognition, on the basis of some data. This data could be written-language data we are used to, pictures, real objects in the real world or combinations of these. A rock on the side of the road is not intended for any cognition for anyone; hence it is meaningless. But a big rock kept in the middle of the road “means” something - probably means that that road is blocked from thereon (a boundary or something).

By ‘intended’, it implies that it (the data - something that means something) is created by someone - some human being. So there is human intention behind a meaning i.e. behind the existence of the data that means something. So there is a goal associated with every data.

So effectively, a piece of data is a communication between the creator and the receiver.

How is this meaning deciphered from the creation (data)?

A key with a ‘6’ written on it is symbolic data. The ‘key with the 6’ is the data (the creation). There is a creator. The thing intended for cognition is that if you press the key, a 6 will be taken as an input. Hence the key with a 6 means that if you press this key, a 6 will be taken as an input into the machine. This is the deciphering. The way one reaches from the data to the meaning is the underlying language.

Written Language like say English is one example of a medium of conveying the meaning of data.

In the case of the key with 6 on it, we observe that the deciphering of the meaning involves relating the given data to the surroundings also. In that case, it was the machine of which the keyboard and thereby the key was a part of. In the case of the drawing of a male on the door of a washroom, the deciphering of the meaning relies on relating the drawing - the male - with the surroundings i.e. the door and what lies behind that door.

In written/spoken linguistic data, these surroundings are the nearby words.

This symbolization which stands for something in reality, via a component of its system (a word / a sentence / …./a picture or drawing) is LANGUAGE. Language means - I will do something and that would indicate something in reality, virtually. So Language is actually an idea - exploiting the phenomenon of thoughts - since thoughts are virtual reality, which is since they "bear" reality when it doesn't exist.

And thinking is manipulating the contents of virtual reality (thoughts). This manipulation can be ANYTHING theoretically; but when guided by commonsense becomes real thinking. And at the heart of this guiding commonsense is a goal. Otherwise the manipulation is meaningless and random. (A goal is a change created virtually, that hasn't happened yet, in reality).

Lets see pictorial language. Consider a boy shown with an arrow pointing towards the right, to its right, and further to the right is shown the same boy with a doctor’s clothes. This “means” that the boy becomes a doctor. In such pictorial language, the meanings of the components can be guessed (from the drawings of the pictures). In written/spoken languages like say English, they have to be remembered (definitions of words). In the former the components are derived from reality; in the latter they are arbitrary "drawings" (like letters and thus words and so on, connected to man-made pre-defined rules). 

In written/spoken-language-meaning, dry rules of language are involved (which have to be plain known). In pictorial meaning, the rules are based on commonsense. The only relation to commonsense of written/spoken language is the fact that some knowledge is left to assumption. In pictorial language it is the links between the components / elements that are left to commonsense; in written language, much of the actual content is left to commonsense. 

Thought and Language, in the mind

Why is there something like 'meaning'? Because there is something like encoding, there is something like meaning (the decoding). Now, language is an encoding. So there is something like meaning, in, or rather for, language.                                                                                            

I have to have a representation of 'tomorrow' to think about tomorrow or to think about something involving tomorrow. It could be a word, it could be a visual, it could be an action.....So (mental) data itself is an encoding (in the form of the representation).                            Sensory data.....real data ....is that encoding? No, since a tree doesn't stand for a tree; it is a tree. There is a real tree and there is a tree in thought. There is a real tomorrow and there is a tomorrow in thought. So thoughts are an encoding of reality. And systems which do that are minds. So a phone which can take a snap of a tree is a mind in some sense since it can encode and store reality (the real tree).                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Language is a representation and writing media are minds. Language is the software of reality, which can exist on almost anything - rocks, water, brains, computer hard disks etc.

So thought and language are 2 representations (like softwares) operating in conjunction, in the human mind.

Any representation needs rules. The representation that thought is, has natural rules - for the visual, auditory etc. correspondences to reality which are stored in temporary/long-term memory, for the purpose of manipulating. The representation that language is (which is used for communication) has man-made rules.

So in my mind I have 2 representation-systems of reality - thought (natural-rules) and language (learned man-made rules). Thoughts are enabled by my sensory perceptions of reality. (Manipulation of the same requires memory). Language is enabled by the abstract, learned rule-set in my memory. This rule-set is again composed of knowledge, which is again a natural representation of reality and hence like the thought-system of representation. This last sentence just shows, as we know, that language is a sub-system of thought.

How are representations manipulated? Suppose I have a representation (natural) of a certain reality, say, a cow, in my mind (so its a thought). And I have another natural representation (hence a thought) of a reality - say, a man. Sheer physical superimposition/closeness (spatial-proximitizing) can make me combine the representations of the cow and the man. In other words, 'bringing together' / 'combining'. Spatial alterations - in wholes / parts - brings about legs being bent (in this case, in parts - just legs). One of the possible variants of the total of such few alterations is a man sitting on a cow. Hence my "new" thought.     

Hence the operators of manipulation of representations are things like - rotate/cut/crop/magnify/twist/...etc. in parts and wholes; and combine/super-impose/add/....etc. (which we have on computers today!) This is thinking. The similar applies for manipulation of language-representations, though that would be more rigid because of a heavy rule-set library (that too man-made and acquired) and lesser inherent flexibility of the representations (words), as compared to the natural-rules' representations (e.g. visual) like those of the thought-system.

Meaning & Understanding, for Linguistic Data

Knowing the Meaning of something and Understanding something are the Cognitive Reflections of each other.

For knowing the meaning, one goes from the value to the slot - the specific to the general - i.e. towards the general.

For understanding something, one goes from the slot to the value - the general to the specific - i.e. towards the specific.

Explanation : 

1) Meaning : 

What is meaning? Explaining the relationship between those entities which have come together.

Consider this sentence - Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of India.

Here 2 such pairs exist; i.e. 2 words have come together twice - 'Narendra Modi and Prime Minister' and 'Prime Minister and India'.

Lets consider the second pair. "Prime Minister of India". What does it mean? What is the meaning of "Prime Minister of India"? How will you explain it to someone?

Firstly, you need definitions of both the words - Prime Minster and India. Now, a note here - definitions generalise entities. For e.g. Iron - an INSTRUMENT which.... , Finger - a PART of a body which.... , Computer - an ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENT which....

For knowing the meaning of a pair one has to know a general fact made up of the generalisations in the definitions of the words in the pair. In this case, that fact is - Regions (generalisation of India in its definition) have Leaders  (generalisation of Prime Minister in its definition). It is this general fact - Regions have leaders - which is the key in knowing / explaining to someone the meaning of "Prime Minister of India". 

2) Understanding : 

How does one understand something? Well, firstly one only UNDERSTANDS some general statement, and applies it to a specific case. So when someone wants to understand (something general like) 'Regions have leaders', one goes to an example (goes to the specifics) and gets an idea. In this case, how would you make someone understand - 'Regions have leaders'? You will start with an example - You know Donald Trump is the leader of America? Now Americans do various things for their personal and professional lives. All that leads to processes and dynamics like economy, culture, society  etc. For controlling and maintaining all these processes there has to be a ruler, someone who leads and takes decisions and governs....etc. Such a person is the leader of a region, like Donald Trump is of America. 

So, for meaning, one goes towards the general. For understanding, one goes towards the specific.

One might ask - what if I have to understand - 'Prime Minister of India' - or know the meaning (which I don't know) of 'Regions have leaders'? 

In the first case - as we saw above, 'regions have leaders' doesn't really make someone understand the term "Prime Minister of India" but just briefly, definitively acquaints him with a basic meaning of the term. If someone has to truly understand 'Prime Minister of India', one has to go to the specifics (as stated in the case of understanding, as its trait) i.e. take an example and see how some particular Prime MInister rules a particular country. 

In the second case - as we saw above, going to an example (specifics) makes one understand the concept but doesn't really tell the Linguistic meaning of the phrase which is specific and characteristic to the given Linguistic form. For that, one has to generalise the term 'regions have leaders' with their definitions and thereby get to know the meaning of the phrase 'regions have leaders' which is specific to and characteristic of the linguistic arrangement of the words that make up the phrase. 

Hence, still, Meaning - going to the general, & Understanding - going to the specific.

Commonsensical ‘Meaning’ OR Commonsense-Meaning

What is meaning? Lets see first how meaning (of terms) manifests itself in our world. 

A ‘cupboard’ is this..

A ‘towel’ is this ….

A ‘society’ is this ….

etc. 

So there are these associations between 2 things - the Term (T) and the Meaning (M).

What if someone asks you - What is a curve (and whats straight)? There is no pure definition of a curve or straight; only properties are used as definitions. Also one is defined in terms of the other. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/curve#).

But there is something in a curve that we know and understand which makes it a curve. Same with a straight line. That's proved by the fact that given a sample we can identify correctly whether it's the former or the latter. 

So we have consumed something in a curve FOR OURSELVES which has made us identify and understand curves. So ultimately it is about our IDEA which we have formed when someone told us that this given thing is a curve. (Also, it ultimately reducing-ly  is in terms of my sensory perceptions). And what is that IDEA? 

When my sensory perceptions are so and so and such and such, then that entity is called so and so.

That which contains so and so and such and such (which cannot be put into words for me or may be able to be put in some personal language) is so and so an entity. 

This applied to commonsense meanings - meanings of things like a chair, a handkerchief, love etc. - which were never taught to us like ‘non-inertial reference frames’ in Mechanics were taught to us. I can put into definitive describable terms what an non-inertial reference frame is - a frame which has a non-zero acceleration. Ask me to identify if a reference frame is non-inertial, and I will check/see its acceleration (if it's accelerating). 

How I identify what I identify commonsensical-ly, cannot be put into words, and that may not accurately match with any formal definition of that word (if one exists).

That's the real meaning of something for us, distinct from what is conventionally called ‘meaning’. 

The Wholeness Principle

Consider this sentence - 

A gave a ball to B.

We all know that when we are given a sentence, we try to construct the scene / imagine the scene, in terms of what we know about the world*.

One commonsense assumption we make is that the ball wasnt of the size of planets. How does that happen?

Principle : We try to match the WHOLE (the sentence as a whole, together), at once, to something we have seen before*. It is only when that is done does the size of the ball gets typicalized (and hence normal/regular). The whole involves A and B and it is the presence of 2 human beings A and the B which puts the constraint on the size of the ball - A human being cannot hold a planetary ball. If we part-by-part, isolatedly, and independently constructed the scene i.e. first just imagine an A, forget it, then imagine a ball, forget it and then some B, we could indeed land up with the possibility of a gigantic ball when we are at the turn of imagining the ball.

The "key" word in a WHY question -

Consider any why-question - 

Say,

Why does a chilly taste spicy? or

Why is this school named Arthur C. Clarke centre?

Now consider the first one - 

Why does a chilly taste spicy?

Now, this is a "higher-order" derived question, which rests on some other question. (In fact, as we will see, questions). 

Which is, firstly, how does a chilly taste? (Ans - spicy)

This rests on - Does a chilly have a taste? (Ans - yes)

This rests on - Is there something like a chilly? (Ans - yes)

According to me, the entity that remains existent across all of this chain of commonsense component-questions (which are based upon all the assumed knowledge in the original question) is the real KEYWORD. Here it is - TASTE. It is what we are really talking about, in the original question. That's the real "subject" of the matter. When we say - Why does a chilly taste spicy?, what are we talking about REALLY? the Chilly? the Tasting? or the Spiciness? Agreed, there is a sense in which we are talking about each of these (Chilly - we are clearly talking about a chilly; taste - we are talking about tasting; spicy - we are talking about the spiciness), but primarily we are talking about the tasting.

Consider another question - why is this school named Arthur C. Clarke school? Think about this. Even if we are talking about the school, it being named, and the name - 'Arthur C. CLarke school', we are primarily concerned with the naming (of the school as so and so). 

The real keyword in a WHY-question is "verb-centric". The verb is the master!

~100% ambiguity

‘Commonsense applied to Semantics’ talks about ambiguities in the interpretation of the meanings of text. (Typically, pronouns apply to which of the nouns in the previous sentence).

But commonsense “ambiguity” is at almost every word/phrase, of every single sentence. (Obviously resulting in humour). 

Consider this sentence - a rule stated  for say 5th graders.

“If found guilty, the student will be asked to stand on the bench”.

WORD         AMBIGUITY

Guilty -          If guilty of murder?

Student -      Which student? - student committing the guilt or some other student?

Stand -         on hands / legs?   

Bench -        bench of the classroom or some other bench elsewhere? 

On -             on the seat of the bench or the top-edge of the back-rest?’

The -            is there some special ‘the bench’?

If found guilty - So I can commit a guilt if I can take care of not being found!

What is a number

                                        What is a number?

Why does “a” thing have to be continuous within itself?

The number ‘one’/’1’ means a ‘continuity’. One of anything is a continuity of something, within it. One physical entity is a sameness in something of that thing, within it. (Conversely continuity is ‘one’/’1’). 

Thus, any number is a discontinuity of continuities.

3 is 3 discontinuous continuities.

A natural number ‘n’ is n discontinuous continuities.

The Psychology behind a Statistical Reasoning fundamental

Suppose there is a robbery in school, and after investigation it is established that John is the culprit. Then some days later, there is again a robbery and again John is established to be the culprit. The next time a robbery happens, the first suspect would be John. Why? 

First, a result, which will then be used to explain the above phenomenon. So, for the time being, forget the original issue and just read the following result. 

Whatever data exists in the world - it was said/created by someone, somewhere, and at some time. These are the 3 inescapable properties of any data.

So, there are 2 kinds of data - CONTENT and "CLOUD around it" (META-DATA). The content is the actual matter contained in the piece of data, whereas the meta-data is the data about that piece of data’s existence - it being then, there and being created by whoever did so (the 3 inescapable properties). So, whenever you are exposed to any data, there are 2 data that you consume - the actual data and data about that data. 

Hence, there would  be 2 kinds of thinking too. Say you see something written on a wall on the road. The first type of thinking would be about the actual content of the writing - what it says. You might think of things like say, ‘why does this say so and so?’ And the second type of thinking would be pertaining to the meta-data like - why did the writer write this? why has this been written here, at this location? why has it been written now?

An example of  how powerful  this "simple" thing could  be is - say in your dorm room there is a graffiti board; people have written various things all over. A smart inference of someone who sees it  would be that 'the stuff written near the edges of the board is the most recent'. Why? Because it would have been written when most of the space on the board got filled with the writing of the earlier writers, and people would obviously have started to write in the middle big- space-parts of the board first. This particular inference pertains to thinking about the location of the stuff written (near the edge).

2 reasons as to why the meta-data points striking us is quite elusive : 

1. Cloud data / meta-comes in along with /simultaneously with, the content-data. The content is perceived first and with greater impact. As/while any data is coming at us, we focus on the data more and primarily, than on the meta-data. Content is king !

2. Place and Time (the second and the third properties of any data i.e. the meta-data kinds) are invisible things - not conspicuous discrete objects as such, to be seen and consumed like we do the data (via the senses directly).

Now, coming back to the phenomenon of robbery, the supporting argument one generally puts is that - every parameter (in the whole scenario) in the first 2 cases is the same as is in the new 3rd case of robbery - the “whole scene” is the same on the 3rd occasion too (imagine a video of the scene). So, in the new case also, the same inference must be true. 

Well, agreed that all the parameters are the same, but except just the fact that this is a new ‘occasion / instance’ (which is the basis of the rationale that it is not logically necessary that the culprit should be John again). This parameter is a meta-data parameter - occasion/instance (hence pertains to time - see the very first line of the result write-up above). 

Hence, according to the result, it is elusive to be registered like the other content-parameters. So the 2 scenarios i.e the earlier 1st and 2nd cases on one side and the 3rd case on the other, appear to be exactly the same. Hence the Psychology for same inference. 

Sequential Existential Knowledge

Suppose you know, and thereby say - 'This keyboard costs Rs.2000'. 

That means you know : 

1) This keyboard costs Rs. 2000

You know : This keyboard costs.

2) This key board costs Rs.2000

You know : This keyboard exists.

3) This key board costs Rs.2000

You know : about the existence of something.

4) This key board costs Rs.2000

You know : Nothing.

The number of (key)words in the sentence minus 1, is the number of additional pieces (to the original sentence) of knowledge you have! Each sequential step in the expression of knowledge is a piece of knowledge you have. 

Semantic Meaning v/s Numerical Value

Consider this question - who is the smartest man in the world?

Now whenever we say any word, it means that it doesn't have the meaning of some word which is different from it (unless of course synonym(s)). So the moment one says smartest, he means not tallest. The moment one says man, he throws out animals (4 legged animals), and the moment one says world, it means earth and throws out other planets. All this rests on the simple logical principle that A => not (diff from A). Nothing is the same as something different from it, mostly.

Now, take these non-equivalent alternatives to smartest, man and world - as say, tallest, elephant and Mars respectively. Now convert the question to including these analogous terms - it becomes : Who is the tallest elephant on Mars? Now, these non-equivalents taken the way they are, the new question will never bear the same answer as the original one. No Linguistic “function” applied on the triplet (smartest, man & world) will lead to a question whose answer is the same as that of the question formed by applying the same function on the triplet (tallest, elephant & Mars). It is practically impossible for the mind to conjure up something like that.

Now, Mathematically, suppose you have numbers a1, a2, a3, b1, b2, b3 such that 

a1 != b1, a2 != b2 and a3 != b3. Still a function might exist easily (in fact, infinitely many such functions, that too easily) making f(a1, a2, a3) = f(b1, b2, b3).
Hence, semantic meaning is dangerous to be equated with numerical value. Hence, word2vec seems to be a…….

Mechanical analog of Deductive Reasoning

Mechanical analog of Deductive Reasoning : 

Consider a machine with several parts working interconnectedly in tandem with each other.

If a part of that machine can be replaced by another piece then that piece plays all the roles in the working of the machine - with the others, and as a whole - which the initial part was playing. 

E.g. - Flowers have stamen

          Rose is a flower

          So rose has stamen.

A sentence can be seen as a machine with interconnected parts i.e. words; each playing a certain role, with others, in the production of meaning.

Knowing

                 When can a system be said to know something? 

If we say there was no mind in this world i.e. no living being in this world, would anything have existed? A prompt response would be - Yes, ofcourse, since even if there was no one, the ‘other stuff’ would have existed. But the existence of this very thought requires a mind (and hence someone). Can we have ‘no mind existing, and no mind knowing it’, at the same time? In the imagination-domain, yes; in the "real" one (that is, that which includes the minds carrying out this process of imagination), no. 

The mind can never switch itself off, in general, so to speak, since the very beginning of the expression of this desire is a mental activity.

If there was no living being no one would have known that anything existed. So effectively, nothing would have existed. (???) That leads to - Do you require a mind, to know? Or can there be other entities also, which can know?

Anything that has been (pre-)designed to perform a certain function can be said to know (this is the hypothesis). (Since then it “knows” something - the thing to be detected/sensed in performing the function). The very fact that it is looking “for” something, implies that it knows something, which is, that thing / about that thing.

Also, if you can sense/detect, you can be said to know (not completely; but satisfy a condition) - because then you have a pre-designed function. But, in a sense, you store what you sense/detect, at least for some time. So storage is a prerequisite for knowing. You can know only if you can store. So you need memory. So, if there is no memory, at least even momentary, there is no knowledge. 

So, to say that a system knows, there has to be memory. Hence there has to be an "impression", at least for some time on/in the system. So there has to be a representation of the "knowledge" in the system. 

That representation has to be made by the knowledge-entity (the entity embodying the very knowledge), or had by the system bearing the knowledge? We will see. 

But impression and representation aren't enough. The system also needs to understand what has been represented on/in it. If I write my name on a leaf, my name has been stored and represented in the leaf, but the leaf cannot be said to know my name. 

Now, the moment one says that any system has "detected" something, it has made a match between what it is looking for (enabled by pre-programmed/pre-destined-to-do-so sensory "perceptors") and what it has caught. This is an analogue of the system making the representation itself (of what it has caught). Our system which has caught the external entity has represented the entity first. The leaf example is the other analogue - the entity embodying the very knowledge (the writing material), making the representation. So it seems that to know, the system has to make the representation itself, since the leaf cannot be said to know. 

So for a system to know, there has to be an impression and hence a representation (which are necessary but not sufficient) and that has to be made by the system itself, for detecting/sensing, which requires substrate pre-programming/pre-designing. It needs to have been pre-designed to carry out something. So what the system has been designed to do has to match with what the system is doing - detecting. (Which isn't the case in the case of the leaf on which my name is imprinted).   

So, speaking a bit loosely, if a system is doing what it is pre-designed to do, it can be said to "know what's going on, in general". And if it is detecting what it has been pre-designed to do so, it can be said to KNOW (what it is sensing/detecting). 

And so, the necessary conditions for something to qualify as knowledge are - representation, understanding and memory and these being hosted in an entity pre-designed to do something.

Introducing a concept in connections

Let us introduce a concept in connections.

In 2 connected entities, there will obviously be a 2-way relationship between them.

The entity in whose general description the other comes more “immediately” than the other way round is the Parent node; the other is the Child-node. Or let’s call them ‘Fast-node’ and ‘Slow-node’ respectively.

E.g. - Consider the connection ‘Shirt - Wardrobe’:

Here, Wardrobe is the Fast-node and Shirt is the Slow-node. Because, in the general description of a wardrobe, a shirt is involved (/comes in) more “immediately” than wardrobe coming while you start describing a shirt in general. That is, when you start describing a wardrobe in general, you will immediately stumble upon the word 'shirt' in the description. How will you start talking about a wardrobe? You would start with something like " its a place where.......” and the words 'shirts', suits, pants etc. would then come in. But suppose you are asked to talk about a shirt in general. Then there are quite a few things you will talk and hence quite a few directions you might possibly go in, without necessarily immediately stumbling upon the usage of the word 'wardrobe' during the description.

Other examples-

1. Broom - Dirt :

Fast-node - broom; Slow-node - dirt. You reach dirt more immediately, starting from

broom, than in the other way round.

2. Hand - Body :

Slow-node - body; Fast-node - hand.

3. Oven - Electricity : When you start describing an oven, electricity comes more immediately as against when there is a mention of electricity, an oven comes in. Hence, oven is the fast-node, and electricity is the slow-node.

General, non-contextual, direct (one-step) Connections -

Considering the nature of and the role played by connections, connections are at the heart and soul of any intellectual or mental activity. So we need to define connections.

As a real, cognitive phenomenon, what is a connection? It relates to immediacy of thought-occurrence, in the mind, of something, from something. If this is present, there is a connection. Also, we are talking about direct one-step connections (hence the immediacy). ('John - surgeon' is a two-step connection since John's mother is a surgeon. John is connected to his mother (one-step) and his mother to surgeon (one-step)).   

So we need to study the game of - if one thing is said, what other thing immediately comes to your mind? (Like the rapid-fire rounds in TV shows).

So we need to know about storage of knowledge in the mind, where these immediacies stem form. Lets look into this. 

We think we “know” a lot. So I would like to segregate all that we apparently “know” into 2 parts. Before coming to those 2 parts, lets us first see an example.

Suppose someone is teaching you about and to drive a car. The first thing he tells you is - A car cannot run without petrol. If there is no petrol, the car cannot move ahead. Later, on going to a petrol -pump, he tells you - here you fill petrol in the car. So I learn 2 things about cars - ‘a car needs petrol to run’ AND ‘you fill petrol in the car i.e. there is something like “filling petrol” into the car’. These are 2 things you have learned, and now you know them.

Suppose on some occasion later you happen to tell someone else, say a friend of yours - Hey, if you don't fill petrol, how will the car run? Now, it appears from this sentence that you also “know” - if you don't fill petrol into a car, the car cant run. But no one told you this, as it is; you have combined the 2 pieces of knowledge learned, mentioned above. This is actually thinking - (but) you have COMMONSENSICALLY, and hence, swiftly and easily, combined the “need of petrol for running” with the “filling (the concept of filling)” from the 2 pieces respectively to create this new statement which appears to be something you directly know. 

So, coming to the 2 kinds of knowledge,  the first kind of knowledge is what is impressed upon memory, as it is, in a certain given format, while learning about something (like the 2 pieces of knowledge learned, mentioned before). Hence, it is that which was perceived by us, as it is, while learning about something. And the second kind of knowledge is what happens to be easily and swiftly combined (since it is commonsensically so), from those of the 1st kind, via “thinking”. The latter is so easy and rapid that it creates the impression that we know it (and for all practical purposes, can also be said to be something we know.)

Lets call the first type as type-A knowledge-piece and the second type as type-B knowledge-piece.

Thus, the immediacy of thought, that we talked about in the very beginning, is the commonsensical combination of the literal memory-impressed data while learning.

So, coming back to the attempt of defining connections, 2 entities are connected if there exists a type-B knowledge-piece combining the 2 entities, stemming from the type-A knowledge-pieces about the 2 entities, (or, obviously, if the type-A knowledge pieces stemming from them directly coincide). 

(Otherwise, anything can be connected to anything. The above explains why a rat is not connected to the International space station (ISS), though some distant far-fetched connection can be drawn between the 2, just for the technical heck of it.)

Going from the Subjective Emotional to the Objective

We hate breaking subjective emotional things into their objective parts. We do so for the fear of losing the fun, the charm, the mystery and the beauty of the phenomenon. In fact, we don't want to explain the beautiful and inexplicable in terms of its “constituent” parts. 

Consider, say, Love. We are enamoured and swept by love. But if someone asks a person - why exactly do you love so and so person? ENLIST the points. Lets enumerate it as a 15-point love or a 23-point love or ….. how much ever. The immediate response would be - Yuck! Don't spoil the beauty, the fun. How can you break something beautiful and emotional like love into points and parts? 

Whenever something works, and we don't know why and how it works, there is a sense of impish charm and beauty associated with it. For example, How come this batsman can hit this shot so elegantly and effortlessly? How could this Mathematician have come up with such a formula or a theorem? Why does this theorem work even though it's not yet proved?...etc.

One possible explanation for the reaction in the above example (the enumeration of love points) is that if you break the “unknown” into the “known” then you know what exactly, and the ways in which, it can get damaged, and hence you might lose it! As long as its unknown and mysterious, it is somehow “protected” and “preserved”. But one principle does seem to work - if the size is very small or very large, then enumeration and enlisting does seem to make sense. If someone is a giant scientist, then we want to know the list of his achievements, however long. If something is a trivial emotion, we want to spell out the couple of components of it. 

Anyways, the point is something else. Consider Fear. Suppose there is some big, grand, cloudy phenomenon (say a person) which is the cause of your fear and is giving you sleepless nights. Here, if you break this fear into its constituent parts - by saying things like say, “OK, what am I afraid by? What exactly? Is it the face of the person? Is it because of that specific last month’s incident? Is it….. What can be done about the second and the third points? We can fix the second one easily with a ……. Here, this is indeed a positive exercise and this splitting of a subjective emotional phenomenon into constituent points and parts only helps us and solves our problem.

The process in case of Fear turns out to be exactly opposite to that in case of Love.

So, it appears as if it is not about breaking the subjective emotional into the objective at all. If things go pleasurably, there is joy, and it's “on”! If otherwise, it's “Yuck!”! 

What’s a ‘type' or a ‘kind’?

If 2 or more things have something in common, then they are types - of that commonality. If the commonality lies in the name/identity of those things, then they are types in the typical sense - typical formal sense. Also, that (name/identity) is the “largest” commonality or overlap amongst them. And of course those entities are known distinctly by the different/unique characteristics of theirs. For example, a phone and laptop - what do they have in common? They are both electronic devices. So they are types of electronic devices. But a cell phone and a landline phone are such that their commonality - phone - lies in their names and primary identities. So they are types in the more formal sense - types of phones. Also, that’s the largest overlap between them (phoneness). And the cell phone is known by what's different/unique/distinguishing in it (cellular/mobile) and so is a landline phone (landline/fixed line). Also is a case when one of the 2 entities can include the other entirely. For example, a laptop can have a phone and a phone can have all the features of a laptop. Or a TV can have a digital watch or a digital watch can have aTV. This can be seen as the merging of the types. Also is a case that one type can be improvised and used as/instead of the other type. A briefcase and a pillow are types of rectangular solids, and a briefcase can be used as a pillow (a support for the head while lying down). Conversely, if one thing can be used as another thing, then the two are types in some sense. When you alter even one of the properties of something, you get a type. Or, partial differences lead to types. The entities become types based on those properties which you don't alter. If you alter every property of something you get a different thing altogether. Even in analogies, one alternate pair’s elements (amongst the four elements) are types of something. They are types because they relate to 2 different things IN THE SAME WAY. For example, cars have wheels, and humans have legs. Consider the alternate pair - wheels and legs. Wheels relate to cars in the same way as legs relate to humans. And thus legs and wheels are types (of mobility instruments or whatever). Types of a thing have some analogous or corresponding properties, which might be same, or varying (in which case the varying properties can themselves be seen to be types of some sub-component of the original thing). Men and women have many corresponding properties. And one varying property - say, hands - can themselves be referred to as types of hands. Some types are such that every property in one has a corresponding/analogous property in the other. (E.g. - dog and a cat, or man and woman). In such cases the number of similarities plus the number of differences make up the number of all the properties of each. ‘Examples’ are equivalent to ‘types/kinds’.

Addressing the robustness and flexibility aspect of Commonsense Knowledge Bases

Commonsense Knowledge Bases contain facts known to everyone, like say - Lemons are sour. But is this knowledge flexibly robust in the machine?

Here is a simple scheme (with its philosophy) to make them so :  

What are the Wh-words in language?

Who, When, Where, What, Which, How, Why, Whom, Whose.

• Take a piece of commonsense entry in the KB. Say, ‘lemons are sour’. Now take various perspectives on it by asking all sorts of Wh-questions to it. (This is machine-generatable). This will generate 2 kinds of questions, one kind being very special (we shall soon see). 

So, firstly, this whole set of questions will be - 

1. Who - INVALID.
2. When do lemons taste sour?
3. Where do lemons taste sour?
4. What lemons taste sour?
5. Which lemons taste sour?
6. How do lemons taste sour?
7. Why do lemons taste sour?
8. Whom do lemons taste sour to?
9. Whose lemons taste sour?

So we have 2 kinds of questions - the ones in blue and the ones in red - each primarily serving a purpose : 

1. The blue questions - They help the machine understand a fact from different points of view - from the points of view of some basic allied aspects to the fact.
2. The red ones - What is the nature of these questions? They are all grammatically perfect and hence technically sound. But commonsensical-ly they are weird and a joke (e.g. - whose lemons taste sour?). It seems like someone is unnecessarily trying to be logical and scientific about something very simple and obvious (commonsense). One would say - what do you mean by whose lemons taste sour? Irrespective of whose lemons they are they are produced in farms and they bear a sour taste. What do you mean by whom do lemons taste sour to? To everyone (every human) who tastes them. These seemingly tall questions can be countered and cracked by sheer commonsense if the commonsense is well in place.

Now consider this - Commonsense facts are mostly unchallengeable-y well-known and well-understood. Something like  lemons are sour. But think for a while - when can the validity of this sure and solid piece be challenged? When there are logically and scientifically “weird” questions attacking them. You doubt the basics; you become unsure of the very obvious via say some Cognitive Psychological state or phenomenon. It is these very weird questions which the red ones amongst those generated in the above exercise are! So, if the system can stand competent against these attacks, we can truly say that it is flexible and robust - that too, in a Cognitive sense.

• Answer these questions either via a web search engine (blue) or manually (red). Note  that being a commonsense knowledge base, the blue ones would be answered at a very basic level. For example, a blue question like ‘why is the sky blue?’ in the set of questions to the fact - the sky is blue - would be answered as something like - something to do with light’s properties (and not the actual answer). 

Maybe the manual ones (red) will noticeably outnumber the blue ones. 

---

2 small ancillary purposes of the question sets: 

1. The red questions test the flexibility and faith of commonsense thinking, considering the (unduly) twisted nature of theirs.
2. A machine which is completely logical will face (and self-generate) such logical (grammatically, combinatorially possibilities/cases-like) questions like the ones in red. So  it better have answers to such questions also!

---

• The exercise can be iterated over the answers of the questions also, for breadth and depth.

Cognitive Knowledge-Bases of Commonsense

Cognitive Knowledge-Bases of Commonsense. 

This essentially pertains to the case of commonsense knowledge acquired as kids, about the world around us. 

KBs contain statements like - A microwave is a kind of a kitchen appliance. Hearts are inside the body. You cannot throw an apple onto the moon .... etc. 

Consider the first one, about microwaves. The question is - Were we taught in this format? This piece of knowledge is introducing a microwave oven to someone. You don't teach a kid in this format, that "listen John, a microwave is a kind of a kitchen appliance". It is not a scholastic class that is going on. 

Yes, in case of something specific, exact and technical which you would want to tell/teach the kid, you would tell something like 'when you want to convert litres to ml (millilitres), multiply it by 1000'. 

Let us now delve into the domain of microwave ovens (commonsense knowledge about them). 

We need "fragments" of commonsense knowledge, and not Synthetic "made" and "formal" sentences of the same, for commonsense thinking - for commonsense thinking to be integrated with commonsense knowledge. Commonsense knowledge pieces should be like the fuzzy and mixed information/data shown in movie trailers - short 2-3 second scenes, bearing the 'content'. Commonsense knowledge should be in that 'format'. 

While reasoning about microwaves or doing reasoning which involves a microwave, the commonsense knowledge comes through in that fashion. 

There are 2 points here - 

1. Sub-processes : Your knowledge about microwaves is in the form of random and patchy sub-processes involved in regard to using/experiencing a microwave. 

2. Analogue and Equivalence : Instead of the synthetic statement - 'The container rotates for the duration of the entered time', a more of a "cognitive" statement would be that one-second 

mental snapshot of 'when times up, the rotation stops'. This is equivalent to the synthetic statement, but more "real". Also, this more relates to the way in which that commonsense was experienced and procured - and hence 'learned'. 

Hence, the “REAL” knowledge corresponding to 'A Microwave is a kind of a kitchen-appliance' is - 'A microwave is in a kitchen'. (And further bits added in that way). 

Furthermore, the above discussion also just hints at how the commonsense knowledge pieces (of the domain of microwave ovens) are related to their Procurement, Experience and Memory. Lets dwell a bit on these 3 phenomena, with a one or two examples of commonsense "fragments" corresponding to each. . _{1. Procurement fragments :} 

These fragments are related to the procurement of the commonsense pieces. In the below examples, we see those which are related to the procurement of what a microwave oven is. 

E.g. - - mama's cookies during Sunday gatherings of friends... - what uncle John had once called 'your giant noisy box' ....... 

2. Experience fragments : 

These fragments are related to our experience as regards to the commonsense pieces. In the below example, we see those which are related to our experience of the key features of the usage of the oven. 

E.g. - the timing adjustment - (the pressing of buttons repeatedly by you) - in multiples of 30 seconds..... 

the eagerness when the countdown is getting to 4 3 2 1 ....yeah. 

3. Memory fragments : 

These fragments are related to the storage of the commonsense pieces in our memory. In the below example we see those which are related to the storage of the procedural logics about a microwave oven. That is, the memory of a piece of logic concerning an oven. 

E.g. - oh ya, mummy had (first) opened the door, to take out the dish .... 

the more the time, the hotter the dish. 

Another concern is that these entries being mere facts, they digress from and lack the aspect of cognition. Even though in the human system too, there are present these facts, they are “integrated” with the mental processes, which make them solid and grounded. Lets see the discussion below. 

A KB will have an entry like - 'Hearts are inside the body'. (A typical entry would be like A-X-B; A and B being the entities/concepts and X being the relationship between them). 

But, there are 3 components to any piece of such commonsense knowledge - 

1. What is a heart? what is a body? 

2. The prevalent entry - hearts are inside the body. 

3. The meaning of the relation - 'inside'. Which is, understanding 'insideness'. And this involves the grasp of simpler experiential phenomena as regards to 'insideness' like say - "covering", "obstruction in seeing", "(the act of) open and see", "something coming out of something (say you pierce a ball, and a fluid comes OUT OF it" etc. These exemplary aspects of "insideness" can be perceived by a kid (one or more in each instance of something being inside something), amalgamating into a holistic understanding of insideness. 

Each of these 3 components would get even more solid if we apply Minsky's point to them - you dont understand anything unless you understand it in 3-4 ways. 

The harder knowledge (to understand) or loosely speaking, the knowledge to understand is the 1st and the 3rd components; the middle component is just a FACT. You understand the middle component only when you have an understanding of the 1st and the 3rd. We have integrated knowledge, not just discrete facts. Otherwise it would make no harm in making a statement like say - "OK, they (hearts) could have been inside the pillows we sleep on or inside our mothers' bodies or......but it so happens that they are inside our own bodies". That would rob the human element in the very phenomenon of the possession of that knowledge. 

Commonsense Facts (not facts in general) are integrated with cognition. You may just memorize the capitals of 100 countries without really having an idea of what a capital is; thats not the case with 'Hearts are inside the body'. 

We don't really make much mistakes in, or, forget commonsense knowledge. If someone says 'I forgot whether my nails are inside my lungs or on my fingers', the (cognitive) rot would have had spread deep and far within - and not just restricted to that isolated discrete fact! 

Commonsense Information v/s Commonsense Knowledge

         Commonsense Information v/s Commonsense Knowledge 

Definition of ‘Commonsense data’ : things which everyone knows. 

Let us divide this commonsense data into 2 sets - Set (1) and Set (2).

Let's look at the sets.

SET (1) - 

It would contain commonsense data like - 

The sun is hot

Hearts are inside the body

etc.

Here, these data pieces link 2 entities/concepts with a conceptual relationship. 

In the first example the 2 entities/concepts are the ‘sun’ and ‘heat’, and the conceptual relationship between them (not explicitly stated in the sentence) is 'bearing'. Whereas, in the second example the conceptual relationship ('insideness') links the 2 entities - ‘heart’ and ‘body’.

Let's delve more and see some properties of the data pieces in this set - 

• These are not the first things one comes to know about the subjects - here, sun and heart respectively. Our first exposure/introduction to the heart is its beating that we feel when we put our palm on our chest. The first experience of the sun is that it's yellow and in the sky.
• There is something to understand in such data. (This will get clearer later).

Hence it should be called 'Knowledge'; it isn’t mere ‘Information’. And since it is something everyone knows, it should be called 'Commonsense Knowledge'.

SET (2) - 

It would contain commonsense data like - 

Sun rises and sets

The sun is yellow/orange-ish, light comes from it, if you look at it straight your eyes cant bear it. Hearts beat, hearts are parts of bodies.

A hypothesis statement about such data - 

These wont play to be relevant/noticeable deduction-grounds of anything intelligent that one thinks/speaks. These are so basic that rarely will a thoughtful question arise and will it be answered by factoring in one of these items. Say, suppose one is thinking about the sun or the heart, there will never be a situation wherein you say to yourself - why is ‘X’ happening? Oh right, that's because of ‘Y’ (where the Y is an element in the Set (2)). Questions won't arise in the first place since they would be nullified / nipped in the bud, by one of these extremely basic facts at the “very pre-inception”, so to speak, and things will move ahead in the thought process without it being noticed that these data pieces factored into the thinking. The next link in thought would arise "automatically" i.e. without it being so that -- ‘you stop somewhere, then a fact like this occurs in your mind, and the next link is created’ -- the whole as an observable, noticeable process. 

In principle, yes, there would be deductions which would be based on these items, but they won't be worth noticing. Hence such data should be called (mere) 'information' (something like 'My uncle's name is Peter'). And hence, in this context, 'Commonsense Information'. 

Other comments on and differences between the two sets - 

• If you know an element in Set (1), it means you know elements from Set (2). For e.g. - It is not possible and is pointless to know that the sun is hot without knowing the colour of the sun. But knowing only (2) and not (1) would seem like an odd unexposed mind. 

• Set (2) is more preliminary a kind of a data-set than Set (1). But the items in set (2) are still commonsense-data. (But "ultra-basic").

• Set (2) data doesnt occur in AI Commonsense Knowledge Bases (e.g. CYC). A KB has entries like 'a man is bigger than a fruit' or 'hearts are inside the body' which belong to Set (1). In these  knowledge pieces (i.e. of Set (1)), you are creating “new" links  between 2 concepts/entities (e.g. the comparative sizes of man and fruit), thus pulling together a relationship. Hence there is a sort of a thinking/understanding element associated with these set (1) commonsense data pieces.

Also, the Set (1) pieces will never be proactively taught to a kid by anyone. (No mother, without context, will tell a kid - a computer mouse doesnt have a heart). 

• The first things that come to mind when you come across a subject (say, sun or heart), without any context, are the items in set (2); when you come across the subject as a part of a context, the first thing that comes to the mind are the items in set (1).

• Suppose someone asks a kid - Do you see the sun all day? and the kid says - ‘it rises and sets. So how can one see it all day?’ The basis of this answer is an item from set (2) - ‘sun rises and sets’. The basic visualization of the Set (2) item (rising and setting) is inherently binded with the question statement itself ('...seeing the sun all day or not'). ‘Rising and setting’ is too clearly and obviously connected to the appearance or disappearance of the sun. So, it hardly comes across as some intelligent thinking was done using that piece to answer the question.                                                                  But when an item from set (1) is used, it does come across that the kid has done some genuine thinking (though tiny in representable amount). For e.g. - Suppose someone asks a kid - What if I take you near the sun? And the kid says - the sun is hot, so we will burn. Here the kid uses ‘the sun is hot’ (set (1)). 

Commonsense-Connections

Here, we discuss a “mental algorithm” for figuring out the meaning of terms involving a connected pair of words. E.g. - Washing soda / baking soda, Hyderabad chilly, (romantic) love-birds, arranged marriage, house-arrest etc. 

That is, a procedure for mechanically figuring out the meaning of such words. It is claimed here, to be also similar in many aspects, and in parts to the way the mind works for solving such problems, in early years (i.e. when children come across terms for the first time). And it can also be incorporated in a machine. 

(Note : We are only considering commonsense-connections which young children can make.

Also, it is assumed you know the meaning (one meaning at least) of both the words). 

Consider Baking soda - 

STEPS : 

1. Firstly, the word is mainly the second of the 2 words. That is, here - ‘soda’. Baking soda is a soda, it is not a baking (say, a process/style... of baking). 

So the first question is - WHAT soda? This ‘WHAT’ is the general, broad query about soda. That is, what kind of soda, what colour soda, what property-soda etc. All this is summed up in ‘WHAT soda’?

2. It is Baking Soda.

3. So there is soda, and there is the process of Baking. The process of Baking has to be connected to soda.

4. How can soda be integrated in Baking? (How can the second word be integrated into the first?)

Point : There is a point worth mentioning at this stage. Logically there are infinite ways of connecting the 2 words. But they should make common sense. It should be something similar to something you have already seen or experienced. For example, if someone asks a child what a bird-bag is, one answer is a bag with a bird attached to it. But this isn't something that is seen/experienced and existing commonplace. (). 

5. Here come cases. Firstly, there are 4 cases of the word-pairs. 

i)   Physically Picturizable - Physically Picturizable (Washing soda)

ii)  Physically Picturizable - Abstract (House arrest) 

iii) Abstract - Physically Picturizable (Love birds)

iv) Abstract - Abstract (Arranged marriage)

The first 2 are similar because the first word in them is Physically picturizable whereas the last 2 are similar because the first word in them is Abstract (non-picturizable). You can physically picturize the process of washing and obviously also soda. But you cannot have a physical picture of love (or say, things like day, occasion, weight etc.)

1. If the term is of types (i) and (ii), then try to literally physically-cum-pictorially insert the second word into the physical picture of the first word, in the sense of actual CONTAINMENT, TOUCHING or SURROUNDING NEARBY. (Insert it into the picture). Try possibilities. 

Check for commonsense - whether such a thing exists. (By the way, commonsense is the whole theme of the entire exercise).

2. If the term is of types (iii), then

b.1) ANALYSE the first word as to - what all aspects are there to it?

            b.2) Take an aspect

            b.3) Check if the second word has an almost literal/actual role-playing place as it (in

            that aspect, or in the first word by itself). (As mentioned at the intermediate ‘Point’, it should make common sense and not just be only logically valid).

3. If the term is of type (iv), then 

c.1) ANALYSE both the words as to - what all aspects are there to each? 

c.2) Take all possible pairs of aspects (This is where the second of the 3 parts of the claim mentioned at the very beginning of this document - algorithm for how the mind works - takes a beating).

c.3) Check if the second word has an almost literal/actual role-playing place as it (in

            that aspect, or, in the first word by itself). (As mentioned at the very beginning, it should make common sense and not just be only logically valid).

---

Lets see examples (from STEP 5 onwards) - 

1. Baking soda - we continue our example above. Washing soda is of type (i). So try to literally physically-pictorially insert ‘soda’ into the physical picture of ‘the baking process’, in the sense of actual CONTAINMENT, TOUCHING or SURROUNDING NEARBY. (Insert it into the picture). 

Imagine the picture of the process of baking. And imagine soda. Where can the soda fit in? Fuel for the fire? NO. The correct possibility is soda used (as/) in the subject being baked.

2. Hyderabad chilly - This is again an example of type (i). Picturize Hyderabad and insert the chilly into the city of Hyderabad. So, a chilly from Hyderabad. 

Or being more specific, one may reduce it to - What does the picture of Hyderabad, in general, contain? Roads, fields, Government, people, buildings etc. So chilly from Hyderabad fields (lands).

3. House arrest - This is an example of type (ii). So imagine an arrest inside (a picture of) a house. So an arrest inside a house.

4. (Romantic) Love-birds - This is an example of type (iii) since love cannot be physically picturized. So, take aspects of love - 1) 2 agents 2) feelings in their hearts about each other 3) being together etc. The second word - birds - fits role-playing-ly exactly into ‘2 agents’ (aspect 1). So, agents involved in love. (The birds (people) are the agents in love). 

(*Another possible meaning is - 2 (actual) birds in love. The second word - birds - fits role-playing into 2 agents, making it into 2 actual birds in love.)

5. Arranged Marriage - This is an example of type (iv) since both cannot be physically picturized. 

So take aspects of Arrangement - 1) agents 2) relative positions 3) connections etc. 

And the aspects of marriage - 1) 2 agents 2) they living in a legal staying-together relationship etc. 

The agents who are marrying fit role-playing-ly in the agents of arrangement (aspect 1 of the latter fits into aspect 1 of the former). Hence agents (2 people) arranged into a marriage.

How we consume reality commonsensical-ly in everyday life

How we consume reality commonsensical-ly in everyday life - 

Before coming to the figure -

Consider any data. What is usually around it, in typical everyday scenes, can be called the “commonsense around it”. Or, in other words, commonsense makes us quickly assume around a piece of data, what is usually present around it, in typical everyday situations.

Here is the explanation of the figure :

• The rectangular frame is the reality. The circles (red and green) are the data-points in the reality.
• The red circles are the few data-points we pay conscious attention to. (We don't pay attention to the whole bit-by-bit reality. We miss many things).
• The blue amoebae around the solid circles are the commonsense assumptions about / stretching from, the red circles.
• The green circles inside the blue are the parts of the reality which match with the commonsense-space around the red circles.
• The amoeba-ically-bordered blue space is the total reality we effectively perceive, from the attended data-points (red), by stretching things around them commonsensical-ly.
• The green circles outside the blue amoebae are the reality data points we miss - miss conscious attention towards.

Non-contextual commonsense implications

Non-contextual (not any particular context) commonsense implications - 

In any scenario, there are multiple commonsense implications recognizable - only one or two are "mainstream", the rest are "less effective". The mainstream ones carry more default relevance than the less effective ones. What is the distinguishing criteria/property? We shall see.

E.g. - 1) If you give a book to someone, it won't remain with you.

Implication - it won't remain with you - this is mainstream.

Less effective ones - you will lose contact with the cover of the book

                                 the distance of the book from your body would most probably increase

                                 ....etc

2) If you put a very heavy weight on the head of a bicycle-rider, will the bicycle be able to bear the weight ?

Mainstream implication - above (will the bicycle be able to bear the weight?)

                                        similar one - the weight on the bicycle will increase

Less effective ones - the weight will touch your head.

3) If you open a book, you will see some text/contents inside it.

Mainstream - above

Less effective - the expanse of the book will increase

                        you will see 2 pages of the book (this is not so bad)

                        you will see the binding/partition line of the book.

                                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What is the difference between the mainstream ones and the rest?

The former shows the relation involving all (as many) the components of the whole scenario (as possible.)

In example 1, the mainstream implication includes you and the book. The less effectives - i) does not include the whole book (only the cover). ii) talks about your body only, and not (you the identity + body) which is = you.

In example 2, the mainstream implication includes weight (rider + weight on top of his head) + bicycle. The less effective one does not include the bicycle.

In example 3, the mainstream implication includes book + its contents. The less effective ones - i) talks about the outline / area of the book  ii) talks about (only) 2 of the pages iii) talks about a part - the partition line - of the book. 

So there is a tie between any of these 3 said-to-be less effective ones and the mainstream one. But the contents of the book clearly carry more default relevance than any of the other 3 parts - 2 pages, the binding line, and the outline.

                                                   ************************

Why Commonsense expressed in Logic is a bad idea

Why Commonsense expressed in Logic is a bad idea - 

Suppose I say to you - 

X > X - 5        since anything will be greater than something removed from it. This is commonsense thinking. The basis of the proposition here is commonsense.

Now, one might argue that - 

Logically, 

0 > -5

add X to both sides,

so, X + 0 > X -5

so, X > X - 5

Hence, the same thing can be arrived at and represented logically. 

But logic doesn't capture the reasoning process / the rationale in the above instance of commonsense thinking - that anything will be greater than something removed from it. This is fundamentally different from the logical process of deduction shown above. It (the former) comes from human experience of reality - all that we have experienced about 'amounts' in our lives, till the point of putting forward that propositional basis. But all that can be challenged logically by saying that - all this (experience) is finite and only up-till now; how do you know about other cases and the future ? Also you don't have a record of all the instances of dealing with amounts in your life; may be some skipped from memory. Still, that commonsense thinking piece remains the strongest perceptual force we have of being sure about what we are doing. Putting another way, just imagine how strange it would be if someone doubts that reasoning and believes only in the logical deduction shown above. That would amount to no sense of real understanding / cognition.

The Synchronization between Linguistic and Cognitive faculties

Consider these questions - 

Which year was world war 2 fought in?

Where is the Eiffel tower?

What is Trump's brother's name?

Now, in trying to come up with the answers to these questions, one has to tap ones mind with pointers like - 'year...year....year.....whats the year?', 'place....place place....whats the place?' and 'name...name.... name...whats the name?' respectively. One tap's ones mind's memory with these objective, definitive, "tangible" items/pointers (year, place, name) - and these questions listed above are indeed KNOWLEDGE-based questions.

Now consider this question - 

Why is the COVID situation so bad in the US?

Here, one has to tap one's mind with 'why ....why....why?' Now 'why' is not an objective, definitive, tangible "item". (That is, 'reason'). It doesn't have the same "item"ish flavour as that of year, place or name. You cannot "statically itemize" a 'why' or reason or thinking. And indeed, these are THINKING-based questions.

(Loosely speaking, one can "see" knowledge, but not thought)

The Cognitive Birth of a Question

                       The Cognitive Birth of a Question  

This is an attempt to enumerate the kinds of questions as per the basis of their occurrence in the mind. 

Let us divide them into 3 broad categories - 

1. Thinking-process-based : 

These are aroused as thought processes. 

Illustrations of the above 2 types -

i) The first-type above - Suppose you enter my room and see a huge and thick pen on the desk. A question will arise in your mind - Why is this pen so big? Here you have identified the entity (the whole - the pen) and the mind has gotten quizzed about its property, as to - why is this property so?

ii) The second-type above - Suppose you see some things together - say some crystals with a blue liquid between them and some glittering material sparkled over the whole. You would get quizzed - What is this? Here, you have identified the parts (the properties of the whole - the crystals, the blue liquid and the sparkling glitter on top), but haven't figured out/understood what it is (as a whole).

2. Knowledge-procurement-based : 

These are primarily about knowledge-procurement. 

These can also be simply called as curiosity-questions. 

Illustrations of the above 2 types - 

i) The left-hand-side type - What is the capital of Serbia? This is purely a “knowledge expansion-drive”.

ii) The right-hand-side type - Suppose a kid  is shown, say, a crab or a lobster in a restaurant for the first time and it occurs to it after observing it for some time - what might be inside it? Now this is not a sheer knowledge-seeking curiosity exercise. There is a genuine thought that occurs to him about what is shown to it.

3. Intermediate steps of Thought or Knowledge towards a Thought-goal or a Knowledge-goal  : 

Illustrations of the above 3 types - 

i) The fist-type - Here the goal is a certain pre-known knowledge piece, and there is a thought-based question as an intermediate step towards that goal.

E.g. - How much protein do I have to consume per day for the next 8 months, if I have to increase my weight from 50 kg to 70 kgs? This is a thought-based intermediate question-step towards a pre-known goal of 70 kg weight from 50 kg weight in 8 months. 

ii) The second-type - Here the goal is a certain piece of thought-inference, and there is a knowledge-based question as an intermediate step towards the goal.

E.g. - Suppose someone tells you that his friend is 6 feet 5 inches tall. And then you immediately ask him about his friend’s weight. Here, you ask this intermediate knowledge-based question to infer about his body-constitution/fitness (weight : height ratio).

iii) The third-type - Here the goal is a certain piece of inference, and there is a thought-based question as an intermediate step towards the goal.

E.g. - Is this much decoration enough? Here the immediate question is a thought-based question/judgment about an amount (amount of decoration) as to a thought-based target of it being judged as enough/good enough.