Hi, here's someobservations

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> > Richard and Will - Here are some thoughts about what I'd like to see
> > in the representation we're developing for reasoning about dialogues.
> > I will start with the ground content
> 
> Richard and Will - I forgot to mention that each of the beliefs, goals,
> events, and intentions will need time stamps to describe the intervals
> during which they hold. We may be able to do this only for top-level
> structures initially, but eventually we'll need to include them for even
> deeply embedded structures. We can certainly say things like "Until
> today, I believed you intended to do X before this weekend, but now
> I believe you intended to wait until next month". More later, -Pat

I am in general not a fan of timestamps BUT I agree the examples you site are 
important.  My general problem is that if you time stanp everything then the
 action of timestamping itself requires timestamping, ... an instanteous chain
of subscripted now's.  Clearly this doesn't hapen in real life so what does?
Will and I have discussed this a little and we should make sure its on the
 agenda for Friday.  

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'
> Richard and Will - Here are some thoughts about what I'd like to see
> in the representation we're developing for reasoning about dialogues.
> I will start with the ground content
> 
> First, we need to distinguish between conceptual relations that can
> hold in the world and actions that can alter it:
> 
> - Basic relations [e.g., (on B C)] and negations [e.g., (not (on C D))]
> - Basic actions [e.g, (unstack B C)] and their negations
> 
> I'm not certain whether we should include agents as the first argument
> for actions, since they appear below.

In addition to Will's remarks abour the negtion of actions, I think actions
and relations are completely different so don't really understand why this is an issue?
Could you give me some background?

> Speech acts are a special type of action that take a speaker as the
> first argument, a hearer as the second, and a belief, goal, event, or
> intention as the third. E.g.,
> 
> - (inform A1 A2 (believes A1 (on B C)),
> - (inform A1 A2 (intends A2 (unstack B C)))
> - (question A1 A2 (does A2 (unstack B C)))

In my fog on exactly how all this works I am trying to collect a list of allowable 
speech acts - the literature here seem to contain many opinions.  Do we have an
'official' one?  If so I will write it up.  On the other hand I think that the issue
Will and Pat discussed at our last meeting still is a question.  Who and where in the 
system are speech acts disambiguated.  I asked Will the same question about 'pronomial
reference'.  We came to a decision (although rather vague) but we should discuss this
on Friday.    

> Relations and actions comprise the building blocks for ground content
> in working memory:
> > 
> > - Beliefs [e.g., (believes A (on B C)), (believes A (not (on C D)))]
> > - Goals [e.g., (wants A (on B C)), (wants A (not (on C D)))]
> > - Events [e.g., (does A (unstack B C))]
> > - Intentions [e.g., (intends A (unstack B C))]
> > 
> hese structures can be embedded arbitrarily deeply to encode complex
> beliefs, goals, events, or intentions. E.g.,
> 
> - (believes A1 (believes A2 (on B C))
> - (wants A1 (believes A2 (on B C))
> - (intends A1 (does A2 (question A2 A3 (on B ?any))))
> - (does A2 (inform A2 A1 (does A2 (question A2 A3 (on B ?any)))))
> 

Where did events come from this is the first I have heard about this?  ditto 'does'.
if Relations and actions are 'different' then maybe the nesting syntax is misleading
and wee need another strategy.

> Second, we need to encode generalized structures that match against
> elements in working memory:
> 
> - Conceptual knowledge takes the form of Prolog-like clauses with
>    a single consequent and multiple antecedents, some of which may
>    be negated. The same consequent may appear in more than one clause.
>    Together, they specify a conceptual hierarchy or lattice in which more
>    specific predicates are above more general ones.

Why not full logic as opposed to horn clauses. (don't be dismayed I'm still learning)
Also (as discussed with Will) I am confused abour whether free variables are to be
thought of as existential or universal (there are sentenses in the papers Pat gave me
where they are used in both forms without distinction)  Do we have a description of]
the syntax and semantics of the horn clauses we are using?

> - Action knowledge takes the form of hierarchical Strips operators or
>    a more distributed form with the same content. Each action clause
>    (or distributed variant) should specifcy:
> 
>     - The action's name and arguments
>     - The conditions under which the skill applies
>     - For a nonprimitive action, its ordered subactions and arguments;
>        for a primitive action, an executable Lisp function
>     - The expected effects when applied under these conditions
> 
> We will also need some way to represent abstract relations between
> the conditions and effects of actions, on one hand, and the beliefs and
> goals against which they match, on the other. These appear necessary
> to link the different steps into a narrative, whether at the domain
> level or the dialogue level.
> 
> Best regards, -Pat

Sorry my remarks seem so negative but I am just getting started and lack a lot
of background on the vocabulary and style of this project.  Face to face talk
works better for me that email so please bear with me as I get integrated here.

Richard

PS I have ots of formalization proto writing which I expect we can go over on
Friday.

r