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Lurking at the core of the entire FOA enterprise is the fundamental
question of SEMANTICS : what do the words in our language \mean?
Computer scientists are most familiar with artificial languages (formal
grammars, programming languages, etc.), for which precise semantics in
terms of a particular machine, are absolutely necessary. Many
philsophers of language, notably Frege and Ludwig \Witt, have advocated
that a similarly precise semantics of natural language is also possible:
words are predicates about states of the world: either they apply or
they don't.
An alternative point of view says that such a precise and
abstract semantics can never be achieved. What language means is what it
means to us, the language users. That is, words' meanings cannot be
separated from the Forms of Life of which they are a part. As it happens
the same Ludwig has argued forcefully on this side of the debate!
was
published in 1922 and is a primary reference for what we now think of as
``early \Witt''; {\em Philosophical Investigations} [REF640] was published in 1953 and
characterizes the ``late \Witt.'' In the interim \Witt taught elementary
school, played music and quit philosophy more than once. But even more
striking than the passage of time between these two great works is how
diametrically opposed the arguments put forward in{\em
Tractatus} and {\em Investigations} are. N. Malcolm [Malcolm67] expresses just how unusual
a state of affairs this is: A considerable part of the {\em
Investigations} is an attack, either implicit or explicit, on the
earlier work. This development is probably unique in the history of
philosophy -- a thinker producing, at different periods of his life, two
highly original systems of thought, each system the result of many years
of intensive labors, each expressed in an elegant and powerful style,
each greatly influencing contemporary philosophy, and the second being a
a criticism and rejection of the first. [p. 334] (Terry Winograd's
turn-around concerning appropriate applications of natural language
procesing (NLP) technology, between his dissertation through 1983 [REF358] and his 1986 book with Flores [Winograd86] almost qualifies for
early-Winograd vs. late-Winograd, however!:)
You can imagine my
reluctance to attempt to characterize just what it was that changed his
mind \about, in a short sidebar! Quite roughly then, early-\Witt thought
that Language was the perfect philosopher's tool. He aspired to a
universal language, shared by all careful users, that could
positively and uniquely allow careful {\em naming} of things. Just as
numbers point to essential categories and mathematics builds these into
theorems about how numbers are related, simple words name simple
categories of objects (events, states, ...),and more complicated
linguistic expressions name more complicated categories. An utterance of
language means the same thing wherever and whenever it is said,
just as $2$ does, and just as $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$ remains true wherever.
By the time of his {\em Investigations}, \Witt had given up hope that
the convenient naming system of mathematics was possible elsewhere.
Lanugage for the late-\Witt depended critically on the {\em context} of
the utterance. Naming things was only one possible language game; there
are many others people play all the time. Without understanding the {\em
purposes} to which an utterance is being applied, we can't really
understand its meaning. The meaning of a sentence is its use
(Gebrauch), its {\em employment} (Verwendung), its {\em application}
(Anwedung) [Malcolm67] . This book
proceeds on the assumption that \Witt got it right the second time, and
focuses especially here on language serving the FOA language game. Your
mileage may vary. }
One of most useful devices for getting across his
theory of language was his notion of the LANGUAGE GAME ({\em
Sprachspiele} in German) [REF640] .
\Witt gives many varieties of language games, from chidren's games as
simple as ``ring-around-rosy'' (\S7) to such ``adult'' games as: \item
forming and testing hypotheses \item making up a story; and reading it
\item Asking It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools
in language and of the ways they are used. (\S23) Certainly FOA counts
as another example of a language game, but one with special rules.
Another
interesting aspect of theory is how well it anticipates the models of
language meaning arising from modern machine learning techniques. The
common cause is that \Witt too was centrally concerned with
learning, by children. This is evident in his
``ring-around-rosy'' example, and in his explicit attention to
consequences of learning that apply equally well to our algorithms:
[Consider] two pictures, one of which consists of colour patches with
Our current versions of
the FOA language games are tied to the technologies by which we are
currently allowed to communicate with one another For now centralized
search engines are in the center of this dialog. Authors write and
sometimes try to influence the audeinces their documents reach. Later,
readers use a few of the first words that come to mind to tease out some
possible answers. Search engines do their best to connect these two
vocabularies.
Reading and writing are the primitive language games on
which FOA is based. The tools available to help writers and readers are
currently strong constraints in the FOA rules. People can only express
what they are allowed to express. If only simple query languages are
available, only simple questions will be asked. If all documents are
treated interchangeably, as context-free samples of text, then the tacit
context assumed by the author is not available.
And so to our abilities
to automatically learn what the words really do mean to
authors and to readers will change as the evidence the WWW dialogs do.
Especially unclear at the present are guarantees about COMMUNICATION
PRIVACY AND SECURITY : If we believe all our words are for
everyone's ears, then many things will never be said via the Net. If
search engines watch over our shoulders as we browse, should we be
grateful because it will understand what we \mean, or should we send
them a bill for the valuable training data we have provided? As
companies like \texttt{Amazon.com} use new
technologies which allow them to ``eavesdrop'' on commercial
transactions , consumers must ultimately decide what their privacy,
and more effective indexing, is worth to them personally.
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The FOA language game
vague contours, and the other of patches ... with
clear contours. The degree to which the sharp picture
can resemble the blurred one depnds on the latter's degree of
vagueness.... Won't you then have to say: 'Anything and
nothing is right.' And this is the position you are in if you look for
the definition corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics. In
such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the
meaning of this word [vague]? From what sort of examples?
In what language games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the
word must have a family of meanings. (\S76,77)
Subsections