Reasoning about Space, Actions, and Change

Author(s):  
Mehul Bhatt

Qualitative spatial conceptualizations provide a relational abstraction and interface to the metrical realities of the physical world. Humans, robots, and systems that act and interact, are embedded in space. The space itself undergoes change all the time, typically as a result of volitional actions performed by an agent, and events, both deterministic and otherwise, which occur in the environment. Both categories of occurrences are a critical link to the external world, in a predictive as well as an explanatory sense: anticipations of spatial reality conform to commonsense knowledge of the effects of actions and events on material entities. Similarly, explanations of the perceived reality too are established on the basis of such apriori established commonsense notions. The author reasons about space, actions, and change in an integrated manner, either without being able to clearly demarcate the boundaries of each type of reasoning, or because such boundaries do not exist per se. This chapter is an attempt to position such integrated reasoning as a useful paradigm for the utilization of qualitative spatial representation and reasoning techniques in relevant application domains. From a logical perspective, the author notes that formalisms already exist and that effort need only be directed at specific integration tasks at a commonsense conceptual, formal representational, and computational level.

Robotics ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 315-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehul Bhatt

Qualitative spatial conceptualizations provide a relational abstraction and interface to the metrical realities of the physical world. Humans, robots, and systems that act and interact, are embedded in space. The space itself undergoes change all the time, typically as a result of volitional actions performed by an agent, and events, both deterministic and otherwise, which occur in the environment. Both categories of occurrences are a critical link to the external world, in a predictive as well as an explanatory sense: anticipations of spatial reality conform to commonsense knowledge of the effects of actions and events on material entities. Similarly, explanations of the perceived reality too are established on the basis of such apriori established commonsense notions. The author reasons about space, actions, and change in an integrated manner, either without being able to clearly demarcate the boundaries of each type of reasoning, or because such boundaries do not exist per se. This chapter is an attempt to position such integrated reasoning as a useful paradigm for the utilization of qualitative spatial representation and reasoning techniques in relevant application domains. From a logical perspective, the author notes that formalisms already exist and that effort need only be directed at specific integration tasks at a commonsense conceptual, formal representational, and computational level.


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (8) ◽  
pp. 823-846
Author(s):  
Yuan Hao

Abstract This article proposes that a patentee’s unilateral pricing of proprietary technology should be presumed legal per se under Sec. 55 IPR immunity framework provided by the Anti-Monopoly Law, unless a plaintiff overcomes all three of the following hurdles with actual evidence: (i) the patentee enjoys a dominant market position; (ii) such pricing constitutes de facto refusal to deal with or significant ‘margin squeeze’ for subsequent or follow-on innovators; and (iii) the constructive refusal or ‘margin squeeze’ would likely foreclose dynamic competition. This seemingly high evidentiary burden is justified by three cumulative resources: (i) the very patent mechanism in facilitating innovation, including a solid promise of supra-competitive profit through the right to lawfully exclude competition by imitation, and thus the instigation of a virtuous circle of dynamic competition through pivoting on the critical link of competition by substitution; (ii) the prevalent cautious attitude in sister jurisdictions when dealing with the concept; and (iii) the inevitable limitations of antitrust law, manifested in the administrative and error costs due to lack of proper information and economic analysis methodologies on dynamic efficiency. Through a detailed illustration with six specific scenarios, we see in a quasi-quantitative way that the actual likelihood of unilateral foreclosure on dynamic competition, even in the case of a monopolist patentee, is extremely low despite the existence of a theoretical possibility. Facing this meager likelihood and information deficiency, it would be unwise for a Chinese court to incur enormous costs of searching for a possibility in every case, with the mere guidance of a vague rule-of-reason framework.


2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
SZILVIA BÍRÓ ◽  
JAMES RUSSELL

Executive tasks typically contain a prepotent lure. In addition, they require individuals either to (a) follow arbitrary procedures or (b) update their model of the physical world. Recent research suggests that children with autism may be challenged only by executive tasks of the former kind (containing arbitrary rules). We asked whether this continues to be true when there is no prepotent lure, comparing performance on (a) a task with arbitrariness but without prepotency with (b) a task with both features and (c) a task with neither. The participants with autism performed at a lower level than comparison groups on the first and second task but not on the third task. This outcome is consistent with the view that autism is associated with difficulties in following arbitrary procedures per se. We try to locate difficulties with acting on the basis arbitrary rules in relation to more mainstream ideas about autistic executive dysfunction.


Author(s):  
A. Kadir Çüçen

The problem of traditional epistemology is the relation of subject to external world. The distinction between subject and object makes possible the distinction between the knower and what is known. Starting with Descartes, the subject is a thinking thing that is not extended, and the object is an extended thing which does not think. Heidegger rejects this distinction between subject and object by arguing that there is no subject distinct from the external world of things because Dasein is essentially Being-in-the-world. Heidegger challenges the Cartesian legacy in epistemology in two ways. First, there is the modern tendency toward subjectivism and individualism that started with Descartes' discovery of the 'cogito.' Second, there is the technological orientation of the modern world that originated in the Cartesian understanding of the mathematical and external physical world.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Chen ◽  
Anthony G. Cohn ◽  
Dayou Liu ◽  
Shengsheng Wang ◽  
Jihong Ouyang ◽  
...  

AbstractRepresentation and reasoning with qualitative spatial relations is an important problem in artificial intelligence and has wide applications in the fields of geographic information system, computer vision, autonomous robot navigation, natural language understanding, spatial databases and so on. The reasons for this interest in using qualitative spatial relations include cognitive comprehensibility, efficiency and computational facility. This paper summarizes progress in qualitative spatial representation by describing key calculi representing different types of spatial relationships. The paper concludes with a discussion of current research and glimpse of future work.


Philosophy ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 28 (107) ◽  
pp. 311-324
Author(s):  
Margaret MacDonald

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of those questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling.


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