What is a Knowledge Representation?
What is a knowledge representation? We argue that the notion can best be understood in terms of five distinct roles it plays, each crucial to the task at hand:
- A knowledge representation (KR) is most fundamentally a surrogate, a substitute for the thing itself, used to enable an entity to determine consequences by thinking rather than acting, i.e., by reasoning about the world rather than taking action in it.
- It is a set of ontological commitments, i.e., an answer to the question: In what terms should I think about the world?
- It is a fragmentary theory of intelligent reasoning, expressed in terms of three components: (i) the representation's fundamental conception of intelligent reasoning; (ii) the set of inferences the representation sanctions; and (iii) the set of inferences it recommends.
- It is a medium for pragmatically efficient computation, i.e., the computational environment in which thinking is accomplished. One contribution to this pragmatic efficiency is supplied by the guidance a representation provides for organizing information so as to facilitate making the recommended inferences.
- It is a medium of human expression, i.e., a language in which we say things about the world.
--R. Davis, Shrobe, and P. Szolovits. "What is a Knowledge Representation?"
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