Proof that the universe is infinite

Proof that the universe is infinite - 

Consider the term 'all that exists'. Whenever we talk of "all that exists" in the case of finite things, it is always while we are considering some domain (finite) in which all that exists lies. 

Now, if we talk of a (finite) domain we should be able to talk of something which is 'not the domain'. 

Now, since the universe is all that exists, there is nothing like "not the universe". So the universe is not finite. 

Hence it is infinite.

Do we "use" commonsense knowledge? If yes, "how"?

Suppose I ask you to imagine - A man is drinking juice and for some reason some of it spills out from the glass onto his shirt. What will you imagine? You will imagine that a man is trying to drink juice by putting the glass to his mouth,and for some reason some of it falls down onto his shirt and gets absorbed in it (the shirt gets wet). Now try to break this imagination into steps. Step 1 - Trying to drink juice 2. Some of it falls down 3. Comes near the shirt 4. Gets absorbed in the shirt (shirt becomes wet). 

The question is - how did you go from step 3 to step 4? That is, how did you infer that the juice which came near the shirt got absorbed in it? You would say, I used the commonsense knowledge that when liquids fall on cloths/clothes they get absorbed in the latter. But the question that arises is that at step 3 you obviously didn't know that the juice is absorbed in the shirt. How on earth did you get motivated to think about 'juices being liquid' as their only property from amongst the multitude of possibilities of their other properties when there was no particular motivation for the same? So the question is - did some part of your mind actually go through that step (juices being liquids) in the "forward" fashion i.e. while going in the forward direction of thinking?

You can't even say this - at step 3 there is the sight of a pant nearby - something impending. So there is a sort of a search that runs in the mind that "look for those properties of juices which include clothes in them (for a potential result)", because then the question arises again that how did you think of only the property of a pant being made of cloth amongst its many other properties when there was no particular motivation to think of it?

Or is it so - "think of some piece of commonsense knowledge (or knowledge) which includes a property of a juice and a property of what's nearby (impending) i.e. a pant"?

How does commonsense knowledge REALLY get used?

Diversity in Nature - An Intuitive Explanation

Consider 2 bags, each full of numbers - the same numbers (say, 1 to 1000). Pick up a number from the first and one from the second bag. There is more probability of they being UNEQUAL, than they being THE SAME. The chance of picking up a ‘47’ from the second bag too, after picking up a ‘47’ from the first bag is very very less. 

In general, inequality can happen in 'many' ways; equality in only 'one' special case. Thus there is more chance for inequality to happen. When you take 2 things in nature, there is a higher chance of them being different from each other, in some respect, than the same. Difference/Variation is the norm; Similarity/Match the exception, in nature.

REASON - 

The below observation is factually correct, but that it is the REASON for the above or that the above is ROOTED in the below, is an intuitive statement. Is that correct?

Is it so that there is a high chance of "different things being different" and "same things being same"? What I mean is - when you take two things, any two numbers, they being two numbers means that they are (two) DIFFERENT numbers. And that corresponds to the high chance of them being DIFFERENT from each other too. If you take the same thing twice i.e. "take 2 SAME things", so to speak, then there is a very high (100%) chance of them being SAME too (unless of course if the thing changed in the time interval between taking it the two times).

So, DIFFERENT => DIFFERENT. SAME => SAME.

HOW THOUGHTS ARE REPRESENTED IN THE MIND

              HOW THOUGHTS ARE REPRESENTED IN THE MIND

What is a thought? 

In loose terms - anything that arises in the mind.

Thoughts will arise in the mind to serve the regular goals as well as the latent commonsense-goals in our system. A thought is to serve a goal. Let me explain this. Thoughts can be something active/proactive like “what if we do this?”, “we can put this inside this'' etc. to something passive (say, mere passive observations) like “oh, these three men have the same coloured shirt”, “this window is so big!” etc. In case of the proactive ones, there is clearly a goal that is at stake. Even in the case of the seemingly “dull”/inactive and passive ones, there are latent commonsense goals like - spotting of contrasts, contradictions, repetitions, too much change in a short space/time, instinctively interesting things like ‘first and last times of anything’ or ‘minimum and maximum values of anything’ etc. Hence I say that thoughts are/arise to fulfill goals. 

Nobody is going to think of “odd” thoughts, just like that - say, “this point on the wall (some arbitrary point on the wall where there is nothing but plain paint) is 3 centimetres to the right of the window” upon entering a room. This doesn't serve any latent commonsense-goal in the system (and clearly not any proactive/active goal).

So, there are Goals in the inner system (mind) and there are potential Opportunities in the external world or “external to the Goals”. The latter fulfill the former. 

Explanation of the above diagram - 

As said above, there is a Goal (inner) and an Opportunity (outer). Intelligence connects the two - sees the potential connection between two such. But this ‘intelligence’ is again a process which works. In it, there will be its own internal Goals and Opportunities, which will be spotted by intelligence again; this goes on infinitely recursively. 

Here is one immediate potential objection - What about the representation of these Goals and Opportunities themselves, in the ‘Intelligence’? These are mere data/knowledge and not thoughts. So this issue is addressed as that of knowledge-representation.

Thoughts are connections between these Goals and Opportunities. So, if we accept the above model of thoughts, we need to solve - how are these “connections” represented in the mind?

Let's see what these connections are and how they happen. 

A Goal goes in memory (short-term memory) obviously. Further, using memory again, a bubble of connected things to it, arises around it. Simultaneously the mind is looking at the external world, for Opportunities. An arbitrary opportunity too is picked up - goes in memory and there arises a bubble of connected things (using memory again) to it. There is something common (repeated) to the 2 bubbles (as they overlap) and that forges the connection between them, and thereby between the Goal and the Opportunity. THIS SPOTTING OF COMMONALITY, WHICH IS REPETITION, IS A MEMORY-PHENOMENON (repeated bells ringing). SO THIS ITSELF GETS REPRESENTED IN MEMORY. THE REPRESENTATION OF THIS VERY KNOWLEDGE (OF THE COMMONALITY/REPETITION/OVERLAP) IN THE MEMORY IS THE ‘THOUGHT’. 

Thus, thoughts are a special case of knowledge-representation.

LOGIC V/S COMMONSENSE

 LOGIC V/S COMMONSENSE -

Suppose you are in India. You have a friend in the US. It's your birthday today. He comes to your house today and wishes you a happy birthday. You are totally pleasantly surprised. You ask him, "Hey! How come you are in India this time? What made you come? When did you come?" He says, "I came for your birthday, to wish you in person". You won't believe that. You would laugh and say, "come on, jokes apart. What makes you come to India this time?" He says, "I treasure our friendship so much that it made me come from the US to India to wish you on your birthday". You will clearly not believe this.

Now, the question is - why wont you believe this? "Treasure friendship so highly => travelled a long distance for birthday" fits in logically. (It is not like saying "A is greater than B => A is less than B"). But is it "real"? No. It's not believable. This is commonsense. 

It is just like saying that a sentence might make sense grammatically, but may not not mean anything semantically. Logic is like grammar, commonsense is like semantics.

Additionally, if tomorrow someone gives you a brain-scan medical evidence that the friend actually meant that about treasuring the friendship so much, you would be lost and think he has a mental problem. That would be your inference. Because no regular friends would behave like this. This is 'reason'. Commonsense is 'reason', in the real world.

Also, this example belongs to a class which shows that commonsense is the 'laws of the mind' (how the friend should think). (Perhaps, every piece of commonsense, i.e. even otherwise, is a law of the mind).

Is there anything like 'infinity'?

Suppose you encounter an algebraic term (n+1), where n is ANY number. Now, what is n? As said earlier, n could be any number. But the question that arises is that how do you know that (n+1) is also a number?  Maybe n is the highest number possible. 

We say things like - "...and this process goes on forever...." which means it goes on infinitely. But what does infinity mean here? That the process goes on forever. What is "forever" here? Forever in time, and time is measured in numbers, and they are precisely what the above argument applies to.

MIND and REALITY

 MIND and REALITY -

Consider a blank paper. There is no line on it (it's blank). Now paint half of it with blue. Now we have a line - the one at the interface of the blue and white patches. Extending this argument, one can say that even on a blank paper, there is a line of the same colour as that of the paper. It's just that we cannot see it. Note that no one is saying that there is a line DRAWN by someone on that blank paper, but the line exists. Going by that argument even further, there is everything that's possibly writable, written on a blank paper, just that it is not detectable by a human being.

When the visual sensation throughout is the same, everything possible "exists" in it.

Is such a thing real, or only in the mind? When there is a mere thought in the mind (without being coupled with any 'action'), there is still a chemical and electrical flow in the brain which makes it a reality, but we cannot detect it. And we say for such things - "it is there only in the mind, not in reality". Extending this fully, we can say that a mind, as a whole, is what a brain does, which cannot be detected by human beings. (Ref : I have used Minsky's definition of the mind here - "minds are all what brains do")

There is nothing like "IMAGINATION"

There is nothing like "imagination". Any piece of imagination which comes out of someone's mind is a collection of entities and concepts known to the individual before, which are something he has been exposed to before in some form or the other.

Note that it is a collection. I won't even say it is a 'combination', of entities and concepts, since the way the concepts/entities/concepts have been combined are concepts themselves again, known to the mind before.

Suppose I imagine a pigeon. Then a computer comes out of its body and the 2 enter a drum. The pigeon, 'one thing coming out of a body', computer, drum and '2 things entering a third body' are all entities and concepts known to the mind before. (The items in quotes are concepts, the rest are entities).

So an imagination is a (TIME/SPACE)-SERIES of entities and/or concepts known to the mind beforehand. The particular items in the series and their temporal/spatial order is what identifies a particular piece of imagination. 

The meaning of MEANING

Suppose there are some people in a room fighting with each other physically. The abstract concept which describes this is 'VIOLENCE'. Now, the actual material violence lies at the hitting - the physical coming in contact, of one punch/stroke with another body. And violence is the abstract phenomenon which collectively subjectively emerges out of the whole set of punches, kicks, strokes etc.

So why don't we imitate this idea in trying to define meaning? Does 'T' have a semantics/meaning? No. Does 'TICKET' have one? Yes. What's in TICKET which T does not have which gives the former meaning and the to the latter not. It is the coming together of the various letters in the word, and the emergent idea out of the way the letters combine/gel/relate to each other. 

Similarly, a sentence gets meaning from the way words (most of which isolatedly don't have any "meaning" as such just by themselves, standing alone) combine with each other. The meaning of what is going on in the room mentioned above is 'violence'.

Meaning is the way in which a set of entities relate to each other on the basis of pre-conceived rules of these associations.

Pair concepts - is it a coincidence?

 Is it a coincidence that almost all concepts which have a related pair of entities are equivalent?

1) Action doer - Action doee

i) container - contained

ii) Owner - owned

iii) .....

....

2) Antonyms or Opposites

3) Function - Inverse function

4)......

......

Take the example of host and guest.

1) i) Host and guest are like the container and the contained. One invites/embraces/hosts/absorbs the other.

ii) One sort of "owns" the other since the former is the container.

iii) .....

.....

2) Host and guest are antonyms

3) Hosting function is the inverse of "Guest-ing/Guest-izing" function.

4) ....

......

Take another example - sin (x) and arcsin (x)

1) i) Sine, the function, is the container which contains x which is arcsin(sin (x)).

ii) The 'sin' owns/hosts/floats the x which is arcsin(sin(x))

iii) ....

.....

2) Sine and Arcsine are antonyms

3) Sine and Arcsine are inverse functions of each other.

4) ....

'SAME' and 'DIFFERENT'

 'SAME' and 'DIFFERENT' -

Same and different aren’t “equivalent” opposites of each other. Because - the comparison checks - 'Same' or 'Different' - applied on 2 entities (while comparing them) aren’t equivalent.

Explanation :

If there is one difference between the 2 entities, they are definitely not same.

But if there is one similarity between the 2 entities, they may or may not be different.

What the two equivalent opposites, instead of ‘same’ and ‘different’, though, are -

‘More same than different’ & 2) ‘More different than same’.

The more the comparison-result between 2 things is of type-1, the lesser it is of type-2, and vice versa.

An example of equivalent opposites is simply, say, ‘Big and Small’; the more big A is than B, the less small it is than B.

THE POWER OF A 'REFERENCE'

 THE POWER OF A 'REFERENCE' -

A reference (real or imaginary) divides anything into (different) parts.

Firstly, for 2 things to be perceived as different, there has to be some property of theirs with regard to which they are different. Now consider a white canvas. All points on it are identical. Draw a vertical line on it in the middle. Suddenly there are 2 parts that are different from each other. But the 2 parts are identical in shape and size and colour. Still how come they are different? What property of theirs distinguishes them? Well, it is that one is to the right of the line and the other is to the left of the line. That's the property. But that is not an intrinsic property of the 2 patches themselves, as such. I am seeing them with reference to something (here, a line) and that's what makes them different. That referencing divides the canvas into 2 parts. So consider anything. And imagine some reference (real or imaginary) anywhere in space. Talking in the language with regard to that reference, every point on that object will be DIFFERENT. Thus, a reference (even an imaginary one) has DIVIDED anything into DIFFERENT parts, even without touching it!

The role of Analogy in Commonsense

 The role of Analogy in Commonsense -

What is an analogy? There are 2 pairs. And the relationship the entities of the first pair bear with each other is the same relationship which the entities of the second pair bear with each other.

Now, how does analogical thinking work in the everyday world? If something is known about the related first pair, then it applies to the second pair. This is clearly not logical. This is commonsense.

For example, suppose a kid sees a TV with the name Samsung written on it. And the kid asks what is this Samsung written on it? You say that it is the maker's name. Now, if the kid goes to a Chemistry lab and sees a bottle with 'Hydrochloric acid' written on it, it is going to infer than the maker of the bottle plus the liquid inside it, is 'Hydrochloric acid!

Many of the times this can be right also. For example, suppose a laptop rests on the table. The pair is laptop and table. There is another pair - book and oven when the book is on top of the oven. The relationship which the first pair-entities bear with each other (laptop and table) is the same as that between the book and oven (one on top of another). So if someone says that the table exerts a reaction force on the laptop, one infers that the oven too exerts a reaction force on the book. This is how we understand concepts in everyday life.

DID THE UNIVERSE GET CREATED?

 DID THE UNIVERSE GET CREATED?

There is 'nothing' only when there is something. Without the existence of something there cannot be nothing. That means there cannot be entirely nothing. So existence is a compulsion. Something has to exist, always. Either this is true or the word 'nothing' is invalid.

Conclusion - the universe was never "created". Something always existed.

THE CONCEPT OF THE UNIVERSE

 THE CONCEPT OF THE UNIVERSE -

You cannot point to the universe i.e. talk about it. This is because you can talk about something only when you can distinguish it from its surroundings i.e. from others. You cannot do that with regard to the universe, since the universe is everything. Now we have a contradiction - we cannot talk about the universe and we have the statement that says 'the universe is everything'. This only means that the definition (that 'the universe is everything' OR 'all that there is') is invalid.

Conclusion - The universe is not everything. Maybe it has another definition. If NOT, the concept is ill-defined and does not exist (the universe doesn't exist).

A SIMPLE IDEA (CONNECTIONS)

                                A SIMPLE IDEA (CONNECTIONS) 

Take any 2 words (W1 and W2) in language. 

Write a program such that -

• (Firstly feed the English (regular and/or scientific) dictionary into the machine).

• Generate the meaning of W1 from the dictionary. It will be in terms of a set of words. Generate the meaning of each of those words from the dictionary. And so on. Continue this till the program reaches/finds W2. 

• Record the node-words along each path.

• The string : meanings of the words nestedly substituted inside each other’s meanings, along the path connecting W2 and W1, will be the explicit semantic relation between W2 and W1. 

What is the use of this?

Basically, finding if there is any and the relation between 2 concepts or entities in the world. 

1. Discovery : is there a, and if yes what, is the relation between ‘fire’ and a ‘cyclotron’?

2. Inventions : This will lead to creativity in general - scientific (what is the relation between a ‘wire’ and a ‘screw’?) as well as artistic (Can a ‘jungle’ and a ‘doctor’ be related?)

Does a thought really correspond to chemical or electrical flow?

‘Negation’ and ‘Opposite’ are clearly 2 different things. Opposites are a special case of negation. Consider any physical process, say, breaking. Its negation is ‘not breaking’. This could mean painting, caressing, kissing etc. Whereas, the opposite of breaking is joining (which is also a negation - a special case of it). Now consider mental processes - thoughts. Mental processes have a physical basis - chemicals or electrical flow. Consider the process of thinking the thought ‘Lets go for this movie’. This corresponds to a certain chemical and electrical flow. Now, the negation of thinking this is not thinking this. That is, not thinking that ‘let's go for this movie’. This could mean doing something other than thinking ‘let's go for this movie’. This would mean thinking something else or not thinking anything. This analogously corresponds to that particular electrical and chemical flow NOT happening. But now consider the opposite of thinking ‘let's go for this movie’, which is - ‘let's not go for this movie’. This doesn't analogously correspond to the reverse particular electrical/chemical flow i.e. opposite flow!

AN ANALYSIS OF STATES

 AN ANALYSIS OF STATES 

The below analysis is hoped to be of relevance to Knowledge Representation since knowledge of reality is about states and their changes.

There is no change of state wherein there is no “impression” left of the original thing.

You can do three things to anything -

1. CREATE

2. REPLACE which is akin to MODIFY. Replacement is an extreme case of modification. 

3. DESTROY. Destruction is an extreme case of replacement wherein one replaces the thing with nothing. 

You cannot destroy anything completely - physical or abstract/conceptual. When I rub X and write Y on the board, the ink of X is still preserved. Even if the concept  - the variable x - is gone, the physical location of X is still preserved in the Y. When I forget a thought completely forever, the location of that thought i.e. the brain is still preserved. When I supposedly “destroy anything completely”, some property/aspect of the earlier thing is still alive. Thereby, the thing (material or conceptual) with which the earlier thing was connected to, via a property of its, is still preserved. Hence you cannot destroy anything completely - there is always an “impression” of the earlier thing left.

Partial destruction - if something has been partially destroyed, then the difference between the initial and final is material (/ and  conceptual). When I remove some of the ink of the X on the board, it goes onto the duster. This is material. So it just changes form. 

Now consider the conceptual. When ‘silence’ (a concept) in a classroom becomes ‘noisiness’ (a concept) by the members, firstly, there is no complete destruction of the silence since a property of the silence - the quiet people - is/are still there. Here there is partial destruction - the sound is gone. The difference between the silence and the noisiness is the sound which are air columns in motion. The air columns are matter which cannot be destroyed and the motion of theirs is a concept which, as argued earlier cannot be destroyed completely. So, yes, there is partial conceptual destruction. So yes, partial destruction - (only) in the form of conceptuality - is a reality. 

 

3 Miscellaneous points : 

• Everything conceptual has a physical basis. Even thoughts are chemical and thus physical realities. Everything in the world thus has a physical basis. 

• A physical initiation can bring about a conceptual change (a bending a steel rod changes the shape), but not vice versa. A change of thought can bring about a change in one’s actions (physical), but thoughts, as stated earlier, are physical (chemical) realities. There can be no purely conceptual initiation. 

• Creation is just a side-consequence of replacement/modification.

Now let's get systematic. The reader must have realised that we are playing with the Conceptual and the Material on one side, and Creation, Modification/Replacement, and Destruction on the other. Lets systematically analyze each case : 

1. Conceptual creation - Conceptual creation is equivalent to being rooted in physical creation or is equivalent to conceptual replacement. 

When I create a concept of a variable x, my thoughts, which are ultimately a physical reality, are responsible for the creation of the variable x. 

When a noise in a class becomes silence, there is replacement of the concept - noise - with that of the concept - silence.

2. i) Conceptual modification - When noise in a class becomes more noise in a class there is conceptual replacement (which is equivalent to creation, as mentioned above).

When x becomes x + y, there is the same.

            ii) Conceptual replacement - When x gets erased and replaced by y (on the board), the                       location, memory in the mind of the writer (amongst other things) of it still remain. 

When a thought changes (lets go -> lets not go), there is physical conversion or replacement of physicality (chemicals), and this can also be seen, from one partial point of view, a case of conceptual creation (creation of a thought - “lets not go”). 

3. Conceptual destruction - As discussed before, it leaves an impression of some property. When a thought becomes completely forgotten, the location (a physical property) of the thought (the brain) and a conceptual property (the place in space where it resided) still remain. 

4. Material Creation - impossible.

5. Material Modification/Replacement - Material modification may mean material replacement or no material replacement. When I boil water, there is material replacement, and when I bend a steel rod there is no material replacement. 

When there is material replacement, both materially and obviously conceptually, there is change. When there is no material replacement, still there is a conceptual change. Conceptually there is a creation. This creation is a replacement of some pre-existing concept. 

6. Material Destruction - impossible. As a special case, this can be seen a replacement with ‘nothing’ (zero).

The granular ubiquity of "referent and reference" -

Every bit of thought that you wish to express in language has a "subject" and a "predicate", (of a certain sort, defined below).

Consider this sentence - John gave a ball to Jack.

This information has 3 "parts" - 1. John gave (that John gave) 2. a ball (that a ball was given) 3. to Jack (that the ball was given to Jack).

Now take, say, the 3rd part - 'to Jack'. That's a small piece of knowledge within the broader whole knowledge (John gave a ball to Jack), that the ball was given 'to Jack'. Now consider just 'to Jack'. In conveying that the recipient of the ball was Jack (which 'to Jack' does) the expression in language is such that things are talked using Jack as a reference, and saying 'to' about him, implying that the recipient was someone (Jack). So the 'Jack' is the subject (with reference to which things are talked) and the 'to' is the predicate which is what is talked with reference to what is referred to.

One can see similarly, for parts 1 and 2 -

1. Subject - John. Predicate - gave.

2. Subject - ball. Predicate - A.

In every microscopic piece of knowledge too, there is something with reference to which that you talk, and there is the talk.

Cognitive Meaning

How we understand the meaning of anything - 

I propose 'knowledge structures' which we are aware of through our commonsense experience/knowledge into which sentences fit in as having values, to create the understanding.

Suppose someone says to you - the ball rolled along the ground. Now, you have to have KNOWN through experience (/plain knowledge) that "something rolls along something" or "things roll along things". This is a knowledge structure. Into this knowledge structure, fit in the specific values of 'ball' and 'ground'. This is the only way I can understand something like 'the ball rolled along the ground'. Otherwise the gelling of the definitions of the individual words in a sentence via rules of grammar, with the right sense taken of every part, is just too complex for the brain to understand the meanings of sentences immediately.

The key part in this above knowledge structure is the 'rolling along'-ness. If one doesn't understand the phenomenon of 'rolling along'-ness via prior commonsense knowledge/experience, it is just impossible to grasp the true meaning of the ball having rolled along the ground, which is what the sentence says.

Consider an illustrative example - Suppose someone writes the following sentence in, say, an email to you. 'You have to know other things too (as well as John)'. This is not a clearly written sentence. This isn't proper English. There is ambiguity - does he mean to say 'you have to know other things too and one of those things is John (i.e. knowledge of John, the person)' or 'You have to know other things too as well as John has to know other things'? 

Here, to resolve the ambiguity, the mind selects amongst these 2 GENERAL and FAMILIAR knowledge structures (hazily approximated via reading the sentence 2-3 times) - 'someone having to know other things too and one of them being knowledge of the other thing', and 'someone having to know other things too as well as the other thing having to know other things'. Any other mechanism is just too complex for rapid understanding. 

(Note : The 'other thing' mentioned in the 2 knowledge structures above, if unclear, means the element in the bracket - John). 

Why AI cannot infer intent

AI cannot understand intent. (See Roger Schank's article - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-computer-infer-intent-yet-elon-roger-schank/). AI not understanding intent is a special case of commonsense. Here is how - 

The relation between commonsense and English sentences is such that the meaning of the sentence emerges via commonsense interpreting something that is "incomplete" in the sentence. Consider this sentence - I love chocolates. Now, it is nowhere mentioned that he loves chocolates to eat. It could be to juggle them with his hands. But commonsense gives the correct interpretation that the meaning is "to eat". Similarly, if someone says that 'the US army defeated its enemy', most likely the enemy is the army of another country. (Actually the enemy could be anyone, say, one individual). So, here we see that commonsense completes the incomplete.

But intent is a special case of commonsense wherein there is nothing incomplete even in an explicit description. Yet the meaning and interpretation is left to commonsense judgment. Consider this sentence - John gave a ball to Jack. Here, if John gives a ball to Jack and one is asked to describe this action explicitly, all one would say - John gave a ball to Jack, or at the most, John gave a ball to Jack with his hands. But where is it captured in the English of the sentence that John had an intention to give the ball? Commonsense tells us that - John is a human being. He gave something. That is, he did some action. So there was an intent involved. But this commonsense is not the "completion of anything incomplete". Even the most explicit description of the action/event is not going to say something like - John gave a ball to Jack with intent. OR John had an intent of giving a ball to Jack and gave a ball to Jack.

This puts intent in a special class wherein explicit description too requires regular/typical commonsense judgment.

A definition of Language

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

What is the role of 'who'? What does 'who' do here? There is a "subject" i.e. something we are considering - 'smartest man in the world'. And the word 'who' points to an aspect of the subject, namely, identity. Similarly, we could have had a question like - where is the smartest man in the world? - wherein the word 'where' pointed to the location (aspect) of the subject. So, Wh-words point to aspects (like location, time, identity etc.) of whatever we are considering.

But how many such aspects are there, to anything? Practically, infinite. That doesn't mean we have infinite wh-words, each for each aspect. So we have the mother-wh-word 'WHAT' into which every wh-word can be converted into. For example, 'where is he?' can be converted to 'what is his location?' 'What' is the basic, universal data-procurement operator (wh-word). It is the operator to extract anything that EXISTS. This is because whatever we speak or write falls under 'WHAT is this/that?'

So, 'what' is used when there is a lack of knowledge, in general.

Now, the question is - how do we learn to use words like 'what', 'where', 'when' etc.? Right now, we are talking about the mother word 'what'. So let's ask - how do we learn to use 'what'? MY KNOWLEDGE OF MY STATE OF LACK/ABSENCE OF KNOWLEDGE OF SOMETHING IS TIED TO MY USAGE OF THE WORD 'WHAT'. I have a rough association-rule in my mind as to when there is a scan of my memory which results in lack or absence of knowledge of something, I have to utter a 'what'. 

So, we learn language by associating "states" of mind with words.

Thus, language is a symbol for the self-reflected states of mind.

AN ANALYSIS OF CONNECTIONS

Are connections a Linguistic phenomenon - (connectors like ‘is used for’, ‘is made up of’, ‘is a part of’ etc. make connections)? But even thoughts are connected to each other. So does that mean that thoughts exist in the form of language? Mere triggering of a mental faculty like, say, memory is also a thought - you remember something from something. This (thought) isn’t Linguistic. Or is connectionism a sensory-perception-based phenomenon? Similar LOOKING, SOUNDING, TASTING, FEELING, SMELLING entities. Connectionism exists in what forms? Sensory perception-based - these are based on sensory faculties and memory. E.g. One spots the same color patch on two shirts. One sees the first shirt, the patch goes in memory, one then sees the second shirt, sees the patch on it and there is a match from memory.. Language - Commonsense - these are every-day life, worldly connections we experience. E.g. - Car and Petrol. Cloud and rain. These are “cognitive” in nature. We will come to this point soon. Scientific - these are the universal laws. E.g. - sides of a right angled triangle connected by the Pythagoras theorem. Force and Torque. They exist in real. Sensory connections - Sensory connections can primarily be of the commonality/similarity type. That is, there is commonality/similarity in the 2 connected entities. For example, you see 2 shirts with the same/common symbol on them. That’s the connection between the 2 shirts. This is entirely vision-based (and of course also memory based). But these can advance to more complex types involving language too (and thus involving the semantics of the entities involved) like say - In shirt1, a solid shape is surrounded by its similar-shaped border (say, circle) and in shirt2 there is a solid square surrounded by its square border. This is a linguistic connection - more advanced than mere sensorily-spotted direct/absolute commonalities. Language-based - Scientific connections - Is connection a purely cognitive phenomenon? That is, is it so that only the “thought of a car” and the “thought of petrol” are connected? And that there is no connection between car and petrol per se? Everything is not in the mind. For example, when we say F=ma, it is not so that the thought of a force is connected to the thought of mass and that of acceleration by this relation. This relation between the concepts exists in the real absolute world. Commonsense-based - The general commonsense connections in the everyday world (like Cloud-rain, bat-cricket) are cognitive. In cognitive connections the semantics of the entities (or their webs of meaning) IN THE MIND, are connected to each other, via a thought. (Yes, the exception to this is physical connections existing between entities and concepts in the real world). They are expressible in language. That is why, if two entities exist as parts of a meaningful sentence, then there has to be a/that connection between them. When someone says - car “runs on” petrol, the semantics of car-knowledge and the semantics of petrol-knowledge are intertwined. The web of meaning of car contains links like - ‘runs’ -- ‘engine works’ --- etc. And the web of meaning of petrol contains links like - ‘fuel’ -- ‘powers engines’ -- etc. The moment there is the same entity in the 2 webs, the 2 original entities get LOCKED in a connection. Here, ‘engine works’ and ‘powers engines’ are the same. Hence ‘car ‘ and ‘petrol’ get connected as the above - ‘car’ “runs on” ‘petrol’. The reason why a pen and a cloud are “not connected” is because their webs of meaning don't overlap anywhere, non-trivially, when stretched commonsensically. (This recent discussion motivates us to think that thoughts themselves are manipulations of sensory data, which can later be expressed in language). Experiencing connections - As far as experiencing connections between entities in reality goes, there are again the same 2 types - a) we can again either have sensory data of the literal/actual connection or b) have cognitive experience (knowledge) of the connection. Let's take the first case. Suppose two unequal masses are hung on the 2 sides of a simple pulley with a string, we can actually SEE that the motion of the lighter mass upwards is CONNECTED TO that of the heavier mass downwards. But in other cases like say - car and petrol, you can't SEE the exhaustion of the petrol literally leading to the motion of the car ahead. These connections are experienced cognitively since we just KNOW that the fuel indicator level on the dashboard screen decreasing as the car moves ahead, is the connection. There is no sensory perception of the connection per se, but cognitive connections of the indicators related to the entities. Another cognitive (non-sensory, but knowledge-based) connection in the same case could be ‘the petrol gun at the station being inserted into and taken out of the fuel tank’ and ‘the car zooming ahead after that’. The simplest crudest way to see what a connection (between, say, A and B) is, is that you “talk about” A and you “talk about” B; if these discourses contain something common which is non-trivial, then A and B are connected. (Hobbs - Coherence and Coreference). But why is ‘the same thing being spotted in the discourses about A and B’, special? One philosophical reason for it might be that the world is more different than the same. If I randomly pick up 2 things in the world, the chance of them being different is much more than they being the same. Similarity is rarer than difference. Hence we are attuned to light up when we see the same thing again, in the course of living in general. If the world was full of similar things with just a few exceptions, we would be discussing ‘DISCONNECTIONS’ here analogously rather than connections. There is another question - why do we say that A and B are connected when both of them are connected to the same thing (i.e. their discourses contain something matching)? The point is that the commonality in the discourses, say, X is such that X is representative of A (since it is a property of A) and X is representative of B (since it is a property of B). Hence X “has an A in it” (or an essence of A in it) and X “has a B in it” (or the essence of B in it). Hence the REPRESENTATIVES (what they stand for) of 2 things are the same. Hence those original things are “SIMILAR”/”CONNECTED” (what we call as). Every connection can be expressed in the form of some cause-effect relationship, both ways, between the entities. One of these two appeals more to commonsense. Examples - Pipe-liquids : a) Because of pipes, liquids flow in a channel. b) Because liquids have to flow, pipes are built. Bat-ball : a) Because the bat hits, the ball travels. b) because the ball hits, the bat makes a sound. Car-Petrol : a) Because of petrol, cars run. b) Because of cars, petrol is manufactured. Gandhi-freedom : a) because of Gandhi, India got freedom b) because India got freedom, Gandhi became famous This can be also seen as - Because of one property of A, a property of B is seen. And vice versa. This also obviously implies that change in some property of A brings about a change in a property of B, and vice versa. But the word ‘because’ in both the cases is key. This shows a two-way CAUSAL relationship between properties of the 2 connected entities. In the above examples, the first way appeals more to commonsense. The second seems like a less commonly thought-of and force-fitted connection. If there are entities belonging to the classes of A and B, most often, they are also analogously connected. For example, car (truck) - petrol (diesel). There is another way of looking at these connections. One of the 2 entities “completely submits itself as a whole” in the relation between the 2 entities. The other entity is partially involved. This is a bit subtle. Lets see the above examples - All of the liquid is inside a pipe. All of the pipe may not have the liquid. Ball as whole travels after being hit by a part of the bat. All of the petrol is inside the car. All of Gandhi was used for freedom. Freedom struggle contains many leaders like Gandhi. In the above sense, one of the 2 entities is a “part of” of the other. Connections can be classified on the basis of whether intraneous or extraneous knowledge is required to understand/spot the connection between the 2 entities. When I say that liquid and pipes are connected by the relation that “liquids flow through pipes”, I do not need to know anything outside this - liquid and pipe. This is a complete world in itself as far as the connection between the entities goes. But to understand the connection between bat and ball, I need to necessarily know cricket, which is extraneous to the world of just bat and ball as 2 entities. For understanding the connection between car and petrol, the world of just petrol and car i.e. intraneous knowledge, is sufficient. For Gandhi and freedom, there is more complete knowledge of the freedom movement/struggle that one knows which comes along to understand this relation. A better name could have been “open world” and “closed world” connections. Now we move onto a small yet effective theory about making connections in real-time and in live. Here is the one-liner essence of it : Whenever we come across anything, 2 ‘webs of meaning’ about it are activated in the mind. One of them is a web of specific knowledge - this pertains to the specifics of that particular specific entity we are observing. For example, suppose I see a police officer. The specific knowledge web of him will contain the specific details about that very police officer I am seeing. So it could include his badge, his cap, his physique, his facial expression etc. This web is activated if you are “looking closely” at something - making detailed observations. The other web of meaning is the web of commonsense general knowledge about police officers in general. This could include things like say - passing the Indian Police Service exam, their horrible current working conditions in police stations, most of them in India are corrupt etc. This web is more reflective in nature as compared to the earlier one. As we scan the scene around us, these 2 webs of different entities (the earlier ones of which stay in cache memory), are held in memory together - they stay alive for some time and fade with time to avoid jamming of signals (overcrowding). If there are common items in these activated webs, they happen to be the sources of connections we make amongst the different entities or parts of a scene. These could be remarks, comments, questions etc. about the scene. So constantly, while navigating reality, there are these webs switched on and off in “subconscious memory” of the entities having come across. For example, after reading the name of the young police officer on the badge, you might come up with a remark like - “oh, so people of so and so community (which is a part of the specific knowledge web of the name on the badge) have also started passing the Indian Police Service exam (which is a part of the web of general commonsense knowledge about the police officer) these days!” Lastly, here is an off-beat and subtle point. Everything in this world - entity or concept - has some “operational video” associated with it. Consider anything - say, a Professor. A Professor teaches a class. A rabbit digs burrows in the ground. A computer runs programs. A phone sends signals. A cake is made and eaten. There is nothing which just comes and goes in flash - yes, there are things which occur momentarily, (like say a moment of anxiety), but there are longer-term versions of these things also. A computer can display rapidly changing values of something and hence one might say that a given value appears just for half a second and is then gone forever. But note that the concept here is of the ‘display of something by a computer’ in general - and that has longer-term versions in other cases also. So there's this operational video associated with EVERYTHING in this world. If some other thing is seen in such a “video” of X, then that thing happens to be CONNECTED to X. As a Professor is teaching, he holds a chalk - so Professor-chalk is a connection. A cake is eaten and goes into the stomach - so cake-stomach is a connection. So on and so forth.

Comparisons - of types/kinds.

We compare 2 things which are kinds/types of the same thing (and thus mostly having the same basic structure or functionality) for a meaningful comparison. Theoretically one can compare (i.e. state and similarities and the differences) between any two entities/concepts (say, earth and wrist-watch). Why do we compare? To find out which of the two is better or more useful or the like. We compare corresponding properties which are the sub-entities of the entities being compared. There are two kinds of these properties - entity-centric and entity-independent. For example, suppose you are choosing between 2 shirts in a shop. Comparing the collars is comparing a shirt-centrick property (since a collar has no identity/existence without a shirt). But comparing the colors of the shirts is shirt-independent. Somehow, comparison has more the connotation of difference than similarity. First of all we compare only such two things which at the outset are seen to be different from each other - different samples, different types/kinds/examples etc. However, the bottomline is that mostly comparison is between entities which are types of some one thing and hence they first have some similarity between them, to begin with Also a lot of properties are measurable - so we get the words ‘more’ or ‘less’ while comparing. The general mental algorithm for spotting differences seems quite simple. Visualize A in various scenarios of action or existence (basically mental videos or photos), pick something (property) that occurs as peculiar to A in that photo or video, look for the corresponding property in B and check the difference. Suppose you are asked to compare Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli or Sachin Tendulkar and Brain Lara. One thing is that while checking for differences, the commonsense features, in detail, one by one, like eyes, forehead, nose, teeth etc. and other aspects of other properties (of the photos or videos) don't feature in the mind’s scan - only the peculiar characteristic features do; whereas the detailed, step by step commonsense features feature while looking for similarities. So the similarity-spotting algorithm works differently as compared to the difference-spotting algorithm. What could be the reason? One point is that differences are easier to spot than similarities since they are more abundant generally speaking, than similarities. So the chance during a broad, peculiar-features-scan, of finding differences, is as it is quite high. Similarities being much fewer, one has to look via a more detailed scan. Another reason, more obvious, is that commonsense-wise the 2 entities are more prone to be the same than different. So the mind ignores such features during a difference-check. (Just for completeness and clarity, note that the remaining part of the algorithm for similarities is - look in detail and pick up a property in A, check for corresponding property in B, check if similar). Why does comparison boil down to only similarities and differences? Why can two things be only similar to or different from each other? Well, of course 2 things can be similar in some respects and different in some. But that effectively makes them different, overall. Similarity can happen only in completeness; but for two things to be different, only a small difference can suffice - they don't need to be entirely different from each other i.e. in every sense. Similarity-and-difference does not exhaust comparison. There can be stronger results of comparison like, say, A is the origin of B or A is the cause of B or whatever, which are bigger truths than just saying that A is different form B in so and so senses. For example, suppose one asks you to compare a sportsman X with a sportsman Y of the past who was also the coach of X, then this truth (Y being the “creator” of X) also stands in comparative analysis in addition to their similarities and differences. But in most cases, comparison is about similarities and differences. The “inspiration” for comparison might be either - it could be a similarity-inspired comparison (like, say, a baby and a flower bud) or a difference-inspired comparison (like, say, digital and analog computers). (The former is useful and occurs when we are confused between two tempting choices). In other words, the former is when two things are more the same than different, and the latter when they are more different than the same. In spotting differences while comparing, a special case might arise when the 2 corresponding properties are not just different but stark opposites of each other. It is one thing to say that in A property X is ‘up’ and in B the property X is ‘to the right’, and quite another to say that in A it is ‘up’ and in B it is ‘down’.

Consciousness

What is the most basic cognitive navigation mode in life? What’s the basic zero-state level of cognitive activity going on when you enter your friend’s office or a restaurant or the waiting area of a movie theater? In my view there are two things here. Firstly there is always an awareness of the context i.e. where am I? So this is simply like I am on the street, I am in my friend’s office, I am in my bedroom or I am in a movie hall etc. That canopy is always in an activated state at the back of your head. The second part is that this context dictates or brings forth commonsense specific to that context. So as you move around the place if you see things which are in tune with the commonsense of the context which you are aware of (about being where you are) you just pass by that data; if something goes against that commonsense you stop and take a note (and say make comments, remarks or ask queries). So when you enter your friend’s father’s office the computers and the wires will be simply passed by via the filter-check of commonsense of that context, but a say a pet dog would make you abruptly take note since it violates commonsense of the office- context. So the question at the back of the mind when you come across anything as you scan your vision across or move around is whether that is commonsense, of that context. This is the most fundamental thing we are always doing or the mode we are always in.

Commonsense thinking in language cognition

David went to his room. This simply means that the person David walked or traveled by whatever means to his room. This means that literally speaking, David’s body went into the room. But if someone says to you - David’s body went to his room - then you would think that his dead body was taken to his room. This is because of the use of the word ‘body’. THis is means there is an economics principle operating here as regards to commonsense thinking. “Why the word body when only David would have sufficed?” is the rationale behind the interpretation that his dead body was taken to his room. As a continuation to that, “because the word body is used” it has to be primarily that (body) and no other thing in any sense” is the rationale for arriving at the conclusion - "dead ". Suppose children are playing football on a video game connected to a TV. And suppose a person there gets a call asking what are the children doing? Suppose he says “children are playing football”. This would be interpreted as ‘children are playing real football (not TV video game football)’. For understanding that it is video game football, one would need to be told the part “on a TV video game”. So this means that the absence of that part plays a role in the understanding that they are playing real football. Football being referred to as only football means regular, conventional football. Commonsense thinking in language cognition : There is a reason for the presence of each word. There is a reason for the absence of words. Why “body”? And why only “football”? - both these questions have reasons cognitively manifested in the interpretation of the sentences.

Is this the same idea as CMU's NELL?

Here is a simple, broad idea towards how to build commonsense knowledge bases using Linguistics. Take a general sentence – Doctor is doing surgery on a patient. Now keep expanding the meaning of every word in the sentence (and the words in it, and so on...) using a dictionary and wikipedia, and keep attaching the ‘discoveries’ in each such process, to the agents in the original sentence. So with every random ‘general sentence’ you automatically get a few commonsense facts fed into the computer. In the above example - The expansion of ‘patient’ will unveil the aspect of “medical treatment” which further expanded would bring in the concept of “cost/paymeny/charges/fees to the doctor”. This would create the commonsense fact (by associating these discoveries to the original sentence) – When doctors do surgeries (/medical treatment) on patient, the latter pays them fees/money. The expansion of ‘surgery’ will unveil the aspect of “cutting the skin (mostly)” which would get attached to the orignial sentence as a commonsense fact – When doctors do surgery on a patient, they cut open the skin mostly.

2 kinds of measurable properties of matter -

Some properties are entity-dependent while some are entity-independent. Weight, volume, etc. are entity-independent. So naturally all entities have them. So what is in the property like weight, that it doesn't matter what substance you are considering? (or volume too). Is this the inspiration to the idea that all different matter is ultimately made up of something of the same kind, and which again has weight and volume and thus is matter again (having mass and volume) - (molecules)? Because then only can mass and volume be independent of the substance you are considering - everything has to be made up of the same kind of thing (molecules). Number of keys (keyboard, piano), data storage capacity (pen drive), speed of rotation (earth), softness/hardness, surface area etc. are entity-dependent. 2 kinds of non-measurable/qualitative properties of matter - EI - color, reactivity etc. ED - behavior, looks, friendliness

Order (FOR) a cup of coffee

Richard ordered a cup of coffee. Why is this correct language : (I ordered) -- (a cup of coffee) There is firstly an action done, that Richard ordered. What was the order? It was for a cup of coffee. But you skip “for a”. You directly fuse “ordered” with “a cup of coffee”. “Richard ordered” is the action. In the fusing, the action is directly made affiliationally synonymous or one, with the item coffee-cup. This is allowed because ‘doing an action upon something’ is a fundamental trait of our real world. So there is no need for a connector in between. ‘A cup of coffee’ directly comes under the hood of ‘ordered’ since such an association is commonplace as and moreover also the only possibility of the general broader phenomenon of (order for) + (some food item). This is again a principle of commonsense manifested in language-usage. In language actions are immediately followed by the entity they act upon since actions in real life are, as a worldly phenomenon, directly associated with or are on some entity. We say “cut the cake” and not “cut on the cake”.