Re: [Heartlogic-dev] Re: goals

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 03:49:32PM -0600, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> I have an idea.  What about with each discussion thread
> (this email is part of a discussion thread) we have a draft
> document being considered.  In every email that is part of
> the thread there will be a pointer (a URL perhaps?) to the
> document in question.  Such a reference point will be
> helpful when we're having highly asynchronous discussions.

I sympathize with your feeling of being lost and overwhelmed,
BUT, I am already trying to do exactly what you are suggesting.

You'll find little bits of our conversation integrated into
the OHL web site.

As we build up more material about goals then I'll role it into
a working draft document.

> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 address@hidden wrote:
> > How about this, "individual-intention" is one of:
> >
> >   goal           "I want a banana"
> >   anti-goal      "I don't want ..."
> >   lack of goal   "I am not hungry."
> 
> Okay.  I would consider what you are doing here to be developing
> the ontology of goals.  You might say you are developing the
> ontology of individual intentions.

Yes, agreed.

> You might say that goals are subsumed under individual intentions.

No, they are two sides of the same coin (isomorphic).  While goals
are reified concepts, I can also _feel_ them as affective states.

For example, any "overriding goal" feels different then when
there is "no overriding goal".  Similarly, any "overriding anti-goal"
feels different than an "overriding goal".

So I consider the "goal" terminology as the cognitive perspective
and the "individual intention" terminology as the affective
state perspective.  Does that make sense?

> That's fine with
> me at the present level of discussion.  I might become
> more picky about names as we leave the brainstorming phase
> and move closer to doing kr....Other lingo that is near
> my "Goal" notion and near your "Individual-Intention" notion
> includes "Propositional Attitude" (official jargon from academe),
> and "Hedonic Disposition" (just made up by me).

At the moment, I prefer the "goal" terminology.  "Propositional
Attitude" is a mouthful.  I find "Hedonic Disposition" suggests
some connotations which are not really appropriate for something
as generic as an "anti-goal".

> What you refer to as "goal" I will refer to via "Goal-Pritikin", likewise
>  "anti-goal" will be referred to via "AntiGoal-Pritikin".
> So, here is a question, Does every instance of "Goal-Pritikin" have
> an object?  Likewise does every instance of "AntiGoal-Pritikin"
> have an object?
>
> I am interested in the slots that instances of Goal-Jarrold might
> have.  My KM model, offers some glimmers in this regard.  Much
> much more work needs to be done in this area.  Tested working rules
> which determine the degree to which a Goal-Jarrold or a
> Individual-Intention has been met/violated/etc are essential drivers of
> this part of this region of the ontology.

Yes, this is an interesting direction.  However, I want to put
this on hold for the moment.  We can come back to this later.

> Joshua, one more thing, I encourage you to give at least a rough one
> sentence defintion of each new term you use.  Maybe we should have a
> glossary page on the website?

There is already a glossary there.  Please take a look and
make any suggestions.  ;-)

> > I was trying to give an example of an "anti-goal".
> > Typically anti-goals occur in reaction to
> > something, so it is a little bit awkward to give
> > an example of an isolated anti-goal.
> 
> Maybe this is an example of an anti-goal:
> 
> Billy doesn't want a diagonally cut sandwich. (statement of anti-goal).
> Mommy gives Billy such a sandwich.  (emotion eliciting situation)
> Billy cries.  (if an anti-goal is met and Billy is sufficiently
> bratty and inflexible, then he cries).

Yes.  Fine.

> > I assume that both "goal" and "lack of goal" are obvious
> > enough.  By anti-goal I mean a goal that increases the
> > distance between where I am now and where I want to be.
> 
> Ah, so any given goal might have an evil twin, or even several
> evil twins.  Whereas the given goal might be a recognizer for
> a desirable state, an anti-goal is a recognizer for an undesirable
> state.

Yes.

> ...We might want to do this instead via slots on a
> given goal object.

I want to do a bit more discussion before attacking the
implementation.

> > Maybe this is the part of the goal-satisfaction model
> > which distinguishes between goal-blockage and goal-failure.
> > For example:
> >
> > Tracy wants a banana.
> > Mommy gives Tracy an apple.
> >
> > If Tracy's goal is ridged then she may construe Mommy's
> 
> I assume you meant to say Tracy's goal is rigid
> (not "ridged" (-:).

Yes.  :-)

> > action as fulfilling an anti-goal.  She may start crying
> > now in protest: "I don't want an apple, I want a banana!"
> 
> That would be a fun an interesting direction to take the
> model.

Wow!  Good.  

> > I will probably change the terminology after we figure
> > out what makes the most sense.
> 
> Okay, but, err, umm, what is our overall goal here?
> What new/better piece of model functionality are we
> in the process of getting here?

Yah, see my other email where I address this question.

-- 
A new cognitive theory of emotion, http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/aleader