Friday, May 2, 2014

Is There Consciousness Within Science?

Is There Consciousness Within Science?

An Interview with Ravi Gomatam by Thomas Beaudry

. Consciousness"As science went further and further into the external world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw consciousness staring them in the face!"

The ongoing interface between Western science and Eastern mysticism is perhaps the strongest statement in modern times as to the relevance of India's ancient spiritual wisdom. That the Upanishads are influencing the reigning paradigm of modern science is good reason to look more deeply within their pages for insight in today's world.

A conference sponsered by the Bhaktivedanta Institute in San Francisco centered on the study of of consciousness within science. The Institutes international secretary, Ravi Gomatam, shared with us what he calls the third wave of the ongoing interface between science and mysticism.

Ravi GomatamBhaktivedanta InstituteCan you tell me something about the Bhaktivedanta Institute?
The word Bhaktivedanta itself connotes the synthesis of science and consciousness. Vedanta represents the rational, intellectual side, and bhakti represents the holistic, subjective inner side. The institute promotes studies and discussions on the need for and development of consciousness-based paradigms to outstanding problems in science. The Institute consists of fifteen well-trained professionals, mostly scientists and a few engineers. Our main branch is in Bombay, and we have only recently begun to hold programs in the West.
Our in-house research is based on specific paradigms for consciousness that are available within the Bhagavat tradition of Vedanta, or theistic Vedanta. We also offer research fellowships through which academic people can interact with us, and we hold broad-based conferences and workshops.

When we do conferences we recognize that the topic of consciousness is a very difficult one to deal with. Consciousness has occupied the attention of mankind for thousands of years. As conscious beings we have wondered about our essential nature, our place and our relationship to the universe in which we find ourselves, our rights, and even what are our duties—especially as we see today so many problems caused directly and indirectly by the application of science. No one can claim at this point that he has a final answer to these questions. Consequently our conferences are very broad-based. We bring together a wide variety of thoughts from different disciplines of science, and we provide a forum for discussion so that some kind of a scientific consensual understanding of consciousness can emerge on its own. Although we have our roots in India's spirituality, our work itself is very contemporary and highly objective.

How do you view the evolution of the ongoing interface between modern science and Eastern mysticism?

Capra on one hand should definitely be credited for putting the subject into the center of the stage. His work was the first wave. His essential point was that the scientific tradition and the mystical traditions are two different approaches to understanding the same reality. He managed to draw some parallels between the emerging concerns of science and existing world views of Eastern mysticism. Despite the importance of his work that started this trend, his drawing of parallels was very superficial. For example, his conjecture that the tracks that sub-atomic particles leave on a photographic plate are the dance of Shiva is really pseudo-science. He had a fair understanding of physics and, for those times, a reasonable introduction to Eastern mysticism. His ideas were commercially successful, revealing that there was a large audience for this topic, and they pointed the direction in which further exploration could be made.

ConsciousnessThe second wave, the work of Ken Wilber and others, recognized the shortcomings of Capra, Zukav, and the like. They showed that the issues of spirituality, whether Christian mysticism, Sufism, or the Vedic tradition, are dealing with a different ontology than that of modern science. Thus Ken Wilber strongly argued that we should not think that science is going to lead directly to the same understanding of reality as that afforded by mysticism. At best science could point towards the need for cultivating mysticism, for which we would then have to shift gears. This was the second wave.But the problem with this approach, although true in the ultimate sense, is that it does not chart specific pathways by which science can come closer to consciousness. Indeed, it even precludes the possiblity of an expanded science that can on day legitimately study consciousness directly. In cleaving the two in this way, in a sense, Wilber reintroduced a kind of Cartesian dualism. Instead of the mind/body problem, it became the spirituality versus science problem. This dilemma then formed the motivation for our recent conference—the third wave.

This third wave, as I see it, will begin due to the willingness on the part of scientists themselves to expand the domain of science in very new ways. The motivation for this is already coming from results in established fields, such as artificial intelligence, molecular biology, theoretical physics, as well as new emerging fields like engineering anomolies. Through these fields the causal role of consciousness in the physical world at deeper levels of matter is becoming established. What is required is to sustain this investigation so that a logical framework for discussion of consciousness results naturally within science. In the process science will doubtless discover a new middle ground between what it now thinks of as matter and what the mystics describe as consciousness. It will involve discovering levels of subtle matter presently unknown to science. This new science will become the empiric evidence for, and system by which we can better explain the causal role of consciousness. No doubt, this will require new tools of theory and experiment. Our own contribution is to facilitate this process of discovery.

That's quite a challenge for science.

Well if we survey the history of modern science we will see that major advancements came when scientists succeeded in integrating seemingly disparate phenomen. Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein are good examples.

ConsciousnessNewton's success was that he integrated stellar motions with movements of ordinary bodies on Earth. It was a grand synthesis that launched Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics had an ontology, or mode of existence of things. In it the fabric of the universe was particles: small particles that constantly acted, reacted, and collided with one another according to very precise laws. The first synthesis was that of motions, small motions and big motions. That was considered a big success. Imagine the euphoria they experienced when they realized that an object falling from the Leaning Tower of Pisa followed the same laws that the sun follows! It was soon shown that these laws of motion could be used to understand not only the behavior of solids, but also liquids, and then gases. In this way the behavior of the entire macrocosm and microcosm was thought to be within our grasp. The second major synthesis came when Maxwell unified the concepts of electromagnetic phenomena and light.

People may be surprised to know that toward the end of the 19th century scientists thought there were no more fundamental laws to be discovered; just do more and more mathematics and everything would be explained. It was the famous physicist Lord Kelvin who said that there were only two small clouds on the horizon: "black body radiation" and "ether drift." But these turned out to be bigger than scientists thought.

In this century the two great leaps science has taken concern these two phenomena. One was Einstein's integration of space and time into one space-time continuum, which explained the absence of ether drift. The second great leap was quantum mechanics. It brought us a connection between two seemingly separate realms—physical measuring devices and human observers. The point I am making is that science has made great steps when apparently disparate phenomena were brought together under one roof. Now the time is ripe to bring together yet another pair—mind and matter. But this too requires a new conceptualization. This is now what we are attempting—to bring together science and consciousness, and take another giant step. With the development of quantum mechanics it became clear that the theory had a fundamental problem. The quantum theory has no ontology. It does not concern itself with what the world is made up of. It doesn't start with an assumption about the world's makeup and then build a theory. Rather, it talks about probabilistic connections between successive observations not the events themselves.

HeisenbergAs Heisenberg pointed out, "Quantum theory no longer speaks of the state of the universe, but our knowledge of the state of the universe." For the first time scientists had a theory that ultimately had no objective foundation. That this may be because quantum theory does not satisfactorily account for consciousness has been pointed out by the founding fathers of quantum theory, Eugen Wigner and John von Neumann, but this line of reasoning has not been adequately pursued.

There are also other areas within science besides quantum mechanics where consideration of consciousness has become central. Artificial intelligence is an example, where the initial mood was very similar to Newtonian hubris. Newtonian physicists thought everything in the world could be explained in terms of laws governing basic motions. Similarly, artificial intelligence researchers thought that all aspects of human cognition could be explained simply in terms of rules governing our behavior. But soon AI researchers found that even the simplest aspects of human cognition could not be reproduced. Now they understand that to suceed in AI we need a basic understanding of human consciousness. In psychology too, behaviorism has proven to be insufficient, and what was called introspective psychology is coming back into fashion.

So our institute is promoting the examination of overtly consciousness-based approaches to these problems within science today. Consciousness has been talked about within science in the past, but always with a view to explain it away rather than explain it. Accepting that consciousness has a causal role in the world is a very bitter medicine for scientists to swallow, but they are beginning to do it. And metaphysicists are also beginning to see that while there is undeniable reality to the subjective dimension, any system claiming to explain it must bear relevance to the objective concerns of empiric science. This is the challenge: to answer the pressing questions arising in science that call for consideration of consciousness with genuine consciousness-based paradigms.

How did you choose your speakers for the panel?

Sir John EcclesThe first thing I did was contact Sir John Eccles. Eccles is very much known for his open stand that mind is different from the brain. Eccles was described by Libet as one of the five top neuroscientists of the century. When he says that brain is different from the mind, in the very least you cannot tell him that he does not know about the brain. He was the first to accept, which he did immediately. Once he agreed, everything else fell into place. We had to choose both theorists and experimenters. Data in this field is very, very rare. We chose two people to present data that were from opposite camps. Benjamin Libet from UCSF had data which seems to show that in some cases our apparent actions of free will, such as when our hand moves spontaneously to set the clock, may well be merely action triggered by the brain a full half second before we desired to lift our hand. According to this data, our free will may well be an after thought! There are other ways to interpret his data, and Libet is the first to admit that his data deals at best with local intentionalities, not global free will. Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunn presented data that shows the opposite, that consciousness has intentionality. These were the experimenters. Although Pribram and Eccles might consider themselves experimenters as well, they presented no data. The rest of the panel consisted of theorists of different fields: neuroscience, psychology, physics, artificial intelligence, mathematics, and philosophy.

You mentioned that there is not much data in this field to draw from. What about the data in neurscience?

Yes. This point was also raised during the panel discussion. It was Pribram who complained that not enough of the existing data was sufficiently discussed at the conference. But John Searle came up with the best rejoinder when he said that the problem of discussing data collected thus far is that all this data was gathered specifically to demonstrate that consciousness does not exist. Therefore how can we speak of consciousness and use this data? First we need to do new research.

The difficulty is that science always goes by an operational definition. In order to make any concept scientific, you must have an operational definition, because then it becomes falsifiable and hence becomes scientific. An operational definition is in itself an interesting concept. What it really means is that you can propose any phenomena, like Newton proposed gravitation, but it must be eventually corelated to some adhoc physical measurements. Consciousness, however, is by definition the one that measures, the one that does the observation. So how are you going to give an operational definition of it?

I think the answer lies in seeing that the interaction between consciousness and gross matter involves subtle levels or realms of matter where other kinds of measurement than the ones that we are presently aware of can be made. The work of Robert Jahn and others are the kind of experiments in which more precise operational definitions of phenomena that are closer to consciousness than gross matter, namely mind, can be talked about. If we learn to see other orders of existence between consciousness and gross matter, such as mind and intelligence, then scientists might be better able to conceptualize the ultimate phenomena.

Why have scientists been so reluctant to discuss consciousness in the past?

Did you know that before Rutherford split the atom in 1911 scientists considered the question of what an atom is a religious question?! For them it was enough that the hypothesis of the atom was useful to explain certain physical processes. Kekule, who discovered the structure of benzene said, "The question of whether or not atoms exist has little signifigance from a chemical point of view; its discussion belongs rather to metaphysics." But today the study of what's inside the atom is physics!

Similarly, scientists in this century have regarded the issue of what consciousness is as a religious or metaphysical question. After all, Western science started out as a protest against religion. Since religion went inward, science saw its own task as going outward. But as science went further and further into the external world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw consciousness once again staring them in the face!

Even then scientists thought a hypothesis about consciousness was all that was needed. However, just as the study of the atom has become what we call physics today, the study of what consciousness is, I feel, may very soon become the science. William James said

"When science comes to eventually understand consciousness it will be an achievement in the face of which every other achievement of science will pale into insignifigance."

Many scientists equate mind and consciousness. Yet in your personal presentation at the conference you described mind as subtle matter, different from consciousness. What is your conception of mind, matter, and consciousness?

In my talk, I approached the issue of consciousness from the perspective of AI. The first step here is to show the need for a new paradigm. That artificial intelligence needs a new paradigm has become apparent from the variety of intractable problems in cognition we face in areas such as perception, natural language processing, knowledge representation, and automatic reasoning. We have no general theory of computation yet that can produce human cognition in machines. A task that comes naturally to a one year old child—recognising the face of his or her mother—is hopelessly beyond the capacity of supercomputers. What's required is not just some new hardware/software schemes, but a fundamentally new technology.

To understand what I mean let's compare electronic computers with mechanical calculators. Both are symbol processing systems. In principle, a mechanical system of gears and levers can be constructed to reproduce the workings of any electronic computer. In practice, however, this will not be possible. A mechanical system equivilent to even the simple desktop computer would be so enormous as to fill the entire planet and consume power that all the coal mines on earth cannot supply! This advantage of speed, power, and size is present in electronic computers because IC chips involve operation of matter at a much subtler level, obeying laws of a different kind from mechanical systems. You cant hope to make smaller and smaller mechanical parts and reach IC technology.

Similarly, AI researchers today think that by making IC chips smaller and smaller we will eventually come to mind. But I argue that you can't do that. You have to go to another level to talk about mind. I am postulating different levels of matter. I am suggesting that we have to think of mind as a subtler level of matter that operates much faster and under different laws than IC chips. You cannot reach that level through nanotechnology.

Professor Bremmerman at UC Berkeley has shown that there are absolute limits to infromation processing in physical systems regardless of the details of their internal construction. For example, given a computer of total mass m, the maximum information it can ever process is mc2/h bits/second, where h is the plank's constant. He has gone on to show that even if we consider a computer that has been in operation for the duration of the entire universe, assuming that it has been in operation for the duration of the present age of the universe, its total information capacity will not be enough to solve a travelling salesman's problem involving no more than 100 cities! The conclusion is that the human brain, being a physical device, is subject to the same absolute limitations, irrespective of its internal construction. If the brain alone was involved in human cognition, we should not be able to carry out the kind of complicated cognitive operations that we do! Therefore, I have argued that what is involved in human cognition is information processing involving levels much faster and hence subtler than the brain.

If you accept this idea, that there is more to human cognition than the brain function, then there is already a model of consciousness, intelligence, mind, and brain in the Vedantic texts that closely follows these requirements. This Vedantic model describes mind as a level of matter subtler than the brain. According to this model, thought is to mind what motionis to objects, or beavior is to the body. That is, thoughts have no intrinsic semantic content. An example of this is when a driver drives a car. The idea of the journey is not intrinsic to the car's motion, but a superimposition on the part of the driver. Similarly, meaning is not intrinsic top thoughts of the material mind, but is a superimposition of subjective consciousness.

This idea, that thought is a mechanical output of matter at the subtle level of mind without intrinsic meaning is a novel idea within Western tradition. If this idea can be shown to be of practical relevance to AI, then I feel we can go one step nearer to the paradigm of consciousness, otherwise, to ask current science to jump directly to consciousness is too much. This is a necessary step in what I have mentioned about the third wave—finding the middle ground between consciousness and matter, and thus expanding the domain of current science.

What is the difference between Cartesian dualism and the Vedantic dualism you are discussing?

Descartes said, "I am that, that thinks, the soul, or the reason, or the understanding." He used all of these terms equivalantly. Thinking, reasoning, and soul were all the same for him. This is the problem with Cartesian dualism—that it lumped into one concept called mind all hierarchic cognitive traits. That is why Cartesian dualism has no relevance for science, whereas the Vedantic pluralism—in terms of consciousness, mind, and body—seems to give ideas about the presence of various levels of hierarchy in matter.

If you see a car moving on the street and you want to know why it's turning left or right, one might say, "All you need to do is study the mechanics of the car. The car is a complete system; there is nothing inside." But I come and say no, there is a driver in there. Now that is correct, but it's not sufficient. Still you have to accept that there are several levels of mechanisms within the car, and there is a specific point at which the driver is coming in contact with the car, the steering wheel and control panel. Descartes was correct in thinking that there is an irreducible subjective residio that is essentially the self. That is exactly the same as the Vedic idea tat tvam asi, thou art that. But Descartes was not able to distinguish that there is a subtle material substance called mind that is the point at which consciousness meets matter. There is a hand and there is a glove. The glove is exactly like the hand but it is a cover. So the mind is very close to consciousness but it is matter.

The Vedanta also has a monistic interpretation, monistic idealism if you will. In Shankara's view there is no objective reality to matter. It is all illusion. You hold a very different viewpoint on Vedanta.

Yes. There is a very established tradition of Vedantic thought, monism, that is close to idealism. We are proposing something different,a multidimensional, pluralistic approach to the whole issue of reality. We are talking about individual consciousness and a supreme consciousness or God. We are also talking about matter as an objective reality, the shadow of consciousness, rather than an illusion or something that really does not exist. This is theistic Vedanta.

The question is which Vedantic paradigm can import concepts that can be shown to be empirically and analytically accountable. I do not think that monism can explain any of the problems of consciousness in science in a way relevant to science simply because, according to the monistic viewpoint, in the ultimate analysis matter doesn't exist. Therefore the highesr realizations of monisim by definition can not have any bearing on modern science, which studies the domain of matter.

It seems that in attempting to bring consciousness into science, rather than keep the two separate, you are attempting to bring value into a somewhat valueless technological world view.

I certainly hope so. Today science is totaly without a framework for values. Any highschool boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it. Given the fact that science is perturbing our universe in greater and greater proportions, it is essential that we address the absence of values within science. We must note that the changes wrought by science and technology to our environment are always irreversible. That is to say we cannot go on polluting our environment for years and then one day suddenly say "Oops, that was a mistake, let's take it back." It is easy to destroy something, but much more difficult to put it back together again.

To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity. Without consciousness our own bodies as dear as they are to us, are suddenly without value. This of course is a philosophical argument, but nonetheless an pragmatic one. If we accept it, then, to bring values into science,we need to connect science with what is valuable—consciousness.

Cairns Smith is well known for his work in the field of chemical evolution. I was quite surprised to hear some of his remarks about consciousness. What is the Vedic view on evolution?

Charles DarwinDarwinian evolution is biological. It talks about the needs of the biological system by which evolution proceeds. But it is inadequate to explain the appearance of the first biological system. Therefore we have theories of chemical evolution which precede biological evolution. Cairns Smith, as a chemical evolutionist, was pointing out that consciousness is fundamentally different from all other physical phenomena because it acts back on the system that creates it. Consciousness has a two-way interplay that Smith called interactionism. His realization was that this interactionism must be present at the most fundamental level of matter. It cannot evolve suddenly in matter.

He went to the extent of assreting that "To say that consciousness evolved from matter is to say that a TV evolved from a refrigerator. Such things do not happen." He therefore postulated what he calls protoconscious units, which are not themselves conscious, but have the potential for consciousness that molecules and atoms don't have. However, in doing so he himself is dodging the issue. If protoconscious units are not conscious, then they have the same defect as matter in that they can't give rise to consciousness. If they are conscious, then why not call them consciousness rather than protoconsciousness? This is the same thing that Minsky tried to do in his book Society of Minds. He tried to show that there are certain things called minds that are not really minds, but when they all get together, then you get mind. This degenerates ultimately into philosophical emergence, where something comes out at the top of a structure that is not at the bottom of the structure. So you can see that even materialists invoke some fundamental conscious-like units different from known matter in an attempt o explain consciousness.

We can congratulate Cairns Smith for boldly recognizing the conceptual limitations of chemical evolution, but he has not yet taken the next step, which is to postulate consciousness as a separate ontological category coexisting along with matter. This is what I feel scientists in every field should do to solve the problem of consciousness in there respective fields. It won't suffice for scientists to assume that once we posit something as non-material that we cannot study it. We simply have to develop new scientific tools.

As far as the Vedic viewpoint on the different levels of consciousness within different species, I once explained this to Wigner. According to the Vedas, just as matter has fundamental particles called atoms, so consciousness is full of fundamental particles called cit kana. While every material atom is unconscious and therefore devoid of individuality, every spiritual particle is conscious, and therefore it has to be individual. Individuality is a fundamental axiomatic property of consciousness. Material atoms are governed by the laws of physics, and spiritual atoms are governed by love because they are units of free will.

Eugene WignerI explained to Wigner that each unit of consciousness interacts with matter, and we see its capabilities manifest in accordance with whichever material machine or body it interacts with. If you drive a motorcycle and I drive a bicycle, you may go faster than me only because of the vehicle. It has nothing to do with you or I but the vehicles we are using. He asked me if I thought an amoeba had consciousness. I told him that the Vedas do not say that an amoeba has consciousness, but rather that consciousness has an amoeba body! Just as in each vehicle you see on the road there is a different driver, similarly in each body there is an individual conscious entity. According to the Vedas, all species exist at all times. Material bodies do not evolve. But each individual conscious entity evolves, thus acquiring different bodies which correspond with the individual's particular state of conscious evolution..

This paradigm is not contra-intuitive, and different Western schools of thought can be accomodated within it. Take for example reductionism, which claims that our behavior is essentially controlled by the physical laws operating on our bodies. The Vedantic viewpoint accepts that even though I am a conscious individual transcendent to the body, because I am using this particular body, I am constrained by its operation according to material laws. Thus reductionism can be accomodated within this framework.

You can talk also of emergence. The more sophisticated my physical structure is, the more I can show my skills. Higher order structures will show higher order properties, not intrinsically but extrinsically because consciousness can manifest more of its qualities. Dualism is also accommodated because the Vedic paradigm admits that consciousness and matter are different. Phenomenology, which says that beingness is an essential aspect of every structure that has consciousness, can be accommodated.

In short this Vedic model is the proverbial elephant of which different portions are being touched by so many blind men. One blind man says that it is rationalistic, another dualistic, another idealistic monism, another realism, but no one is seeing the entire elephant of this Vedic paradigm. The elephant is that there are two ontological categories, consciousness and matter, and the two interact to form our world.

Can't you also say that matter is a vitiated form of consciousness, that everything is ultimately consciousness?

This involves a higher philosophical discussion. I can see that at some level of God consciousness we can think of consciouness and matter in these terms—as you put it, seeing matter as a vitiated form of consciousness. But presently that vitiated form of consciousness acts differently as matter, and therefore it can be considered as a separate ontological category.

As the discussion of the conscious self enters the scientific arena it seems that we are at a critical juncture. What is the future of science?

I don't think that I can do better than to quote scientists who are greater than myself, who at the ends of their careers have given some reflections. I have some favorite quotes. W. Penfield, one of the top neuroscientists of the century, said in an article called Science, the Ox, and the Spirit:

"The physical basis of the mind is the brain action in each individual. It accompanies the activity of the spirit, but the spirit is free. It is capable of some degree of initiative. The spirit is the man one knows. He must have continuity through periods of coma and sleep. I assume then that the spirit must live on somehow after death. I cannot doubt that many make contact with God and have guidance from a greater spirit. If he had only a brain and not a mind, this difficult decision would not be his."

The tendency to see the human mind in terms of the latest technology of the times is an old one. In earlier times mind was thought of as a steam engine, as a clock, and before that as a catapult. Today the attempt is to equate mind with the brain. But here is something from Ludwig Wittgenstein from his Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology: "Nothing seems more possible to me than that people some day will come to the definite opinion that there is no copy in the nervous system which corresponds to a particular thought or to a particular idea of memory."

Szent-Giorgi, the Nobel laureate biologist, said,

Atom

"I went through my entire scientific career searching for life, but now I see that life has somehow slipped through my fingers and all I have is electrons, protons, and particles, which have no life at all. So in my old age I am forced to retrace my steps."
So I think the great advantage of discussing the notion of the conscious self within our scientific paradigms is that we can actually enlarge our framework. In order to do that we need help, and I don't think that anyone can deny that the Vedic literatures are the single most vast body of literature that seriously deals with this topic. From page one to the end it is conscious all the way.

Science, as long as it remains bound to emperical reductionism, can say nothing about the conscious self. Many in the contemporary world have tried to define perception such that it fits into their existing paradigms, but this has only made our problems more accute. Time has come to redefine scientific procedures such that they explain the conscious self. We need as many new ideas as we can get. If we are so foolhardy as to reject the entire wisdom preceeding us, such as the Vedic paradigm I have presented, then what assurance do we have that our present-day knowledge will not similarly be rejected by future generations?

Science is rooted in observations, and our conscious self is the very tool by which we observe. Even the strongest giant can not lift the platform on which he stands. As great as scientific knowledge is, it cannot explain the conscious self within its present observational framework. To experience it is to observe it.

[Reprinted from Clarion Call Magazine]

DEBUNKED DARVIN'S THEORY

DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION DEBUNKED


DarwinDarwin DebunkedDarwin's Theory of Evolution, as presented in his book "Origin of Species" has been widely accepted as fact, although it is based on Darwin's fallible speculations. His critics write, "If the theory of natural selection of Darwin is correct, why can't we see the intermediate forms of species, the connecting links?" Darwin did not have the answer nor the archeological evidence to back it up. Although there is ample evidence for many species, fossil records provide almost no evidence for the intermediate connecting links.
Later, scientists revised Darwin's theory with their "Punctuated Equilibrium" evolutionary theory, supposedly making evolution invisible in the fossil record. Yet this theory is not verifiable in any way and is highly speculative.

An interesting article appeared recently in Pravda, in Russia, which gives an excellent argument against Darwinism. The article follows:





Where Are All the Half-Evolved Dinosaurs?

BY: BABU G. RANGANATHAM

June 7, RUSSIA (PRAVDA) — Millions of people are taught that the fossil record furnishes proof of evolution. But, where are there fossils of half-evolved dinosaurs or other creatures?



Java Man skullFossilNeanderthal Skull

The fossil record contains fossils of only complete and fully-formed species. There are no fossils of partially-evolved species to indicate that a gradual process of evolution ever occurred. Even among evolutionists there are diametrically different interpretations and reconstructions of the fossils used to support human evolution from a supposed ape-like ancestry.

Even if evolution takes millions and millions of years, we should still be able to see some stages of its process. But, we simply don't observe any partially-evolved fish, frogs, lizards, birds, dogs, cats among us. Every species of plant and animal is complete and fully-formed.

Another problem is how could partially-evolved plant and animal species survive over millions of years when their basic organs and tissues were still in the process of evolving? How, for example, were animals breathing, eating, and reproducing if there respiratory, digestive, and reproductive organs were still evolving?

In fact, precisely because of this problem more and more modern evolutionists are adopting a new theory known as Punctuated Equilibrium which says that plant and animal species evolved suddenly from one kind to another and that is why we don't see evidence of partially-evolved species in the fossil record. Of course, we have to accept their word on blind faith because there is no way to prove or disprove what they are saying. These evolutionists claim that something like massive bombardment of radiation resulted in mega mutations in species which produced "instantaneous" changes from one life form to another. The nature and issue of mutations will be discussed later and the reader will see why such an argument is not viable.

The fact that animal and plant species are found fully formed and complete in the fossil record is powerful evidence (although not proof) for creation because it is evidence that they came into existence as fully formed and complete which is possible only by creation.

Evolutionists claim that the genetic and biological similarities between species is evidence of common ancestry. However, that is only one interpretation of the evidence. Another possibility is that the comparative similarities are due to a common Designer who designed similar functions for similar purposes in all the various forms of life. Neither position can be scientifically proved.

Although Darwin was partially correct by showing that natural selection occurs in nature, the problem is that natural selection itself is not a creative force. Natural selection can only work with those biological variations that are possible. The evidence from genetics supports only the possibility for horizontal evolution (i.e. varieties of dogs, cats, horses, cows, etc.) but not vertical evolution (i.e. from fish to human). Unless Nature has the ability to perform genetic engineering vertical evolution will not be possible.

The early grooves in the human embryo that appear to look like gills are really the early stages in the formation of the face, throat, and neck regions. The so-called "tailbone" is the early formation of the coccyx and spinal column which, because of the rate of growth being faster than the rest of the body during this stage, appears to look like a tail. The coccyx has already been proven to be useful in providing support for the pelvic muscles.

Modern science has shown that there are genetic limits to evolution or biological change in nature. Again, all biological variations, whether they are beneficial to survival or not, are possible only within the genetic potential and limits of a biological kind such as the varieties among dogs, cats, horses, cows, etc.

Variations across biological kinds such as humans evolving from ape-like creatures and apes, in turn, evolving from dog-like creatures and so on, as Darwinian evolutionary theory teaches, are not possible unless Nature has the capability of performing genetic engineering.

Biological variations are determined by the DNA or genetic code of species. The DNA molecule is actually a molecular string of various nucleic acids which are arranged in a sequence just like the letters in a sentence. It is this sequence in DNA that tells cells in the body how to construct various tissues and organs.

The common belief among evolutionists is that random mutations in the genetic code over time will produce entirely new sequences for new traits and characteristics which natural selection can then act upon resulting in entirely new species. Evolutionists consider mutations to be a form of natural genetic engineering.

However, the very nature of mutations precludes such a possibility. Mutations are accidental changes in the sequential structure of the genetic code caused by various random environmental forces such as radiation and toxic chemicals.

Almost all true mutations are harmful, which is what one would normally expect from accidents. Even if a good mutation occurred for every good one there will be thousands of harmful ones with the net result over time being disastrous for the species.

Most biological variations, however, are the result of new combinations of previously existing genes - not because of mutations.

Furthermore, mutations simply produce new varieties of already existing traits. For example, mutations in the gene for human hair may change the gene so that another type of human hair develops, but the mutations won't change the gene so that feathers or wings develop.

Sometimes mutations may trigger the duplication of already existing traits (i.e. an extra finger, toe, or even an entire head, even in another area of the body!). But mutations have no ability to produce entirely new traits or characteristics.

Young people, and even adults, often wonder how all the varieties and races of people could have descended from Adam and Eve as the Bible teaches. Well, in principle, that's no different than asking how children with different color hair (i.e., blond, brunette, brown, red ) can come from the same parents who both have black hair.

Just as some individuals today carry genes to produce descendants with different color hair and eyes, our first parents, Adam and Eve, possessed genes to produce all the varieties and races of men. You and I today may not carry the genes to produce every variety or race of humans, but Adam and Eve did possess such genes.

All varieties of humans carry the genes for the same basic traits, but not all humans carry every possible variation of those genes. For example, one person may be carrying several variations of the gene for eye color (i.e., brown, green, blue) , but someone else may be carrying only one variation of the gene for eye color (i.e., brown). Thus, both will have different abilities to affect the eye color of their offspring.

Science cannot prove we're here by creation, but neither can science prove we're here by chance or macro-evolution. No one has observed either. They are both accepted on faith. The issue is which faith, Darwinian macro-evolutionary theory or creation, has better scientific support.

What we believe about life's origins does influence our philosophy and value of life as well as our view of ourselves and others. This is no small issue!

Just because the laws of science can explain how life and the universe operate and work doesn't mean there is no Maker. Would it be rational to believe that there's no designer behind airplanes because the laws of science can explain how airplanes operate and work?

Natural laws are adequate to explain how the order in life, the universe, and even a microwave oven operates, but mere undirected natural laws can never fully explain the origin of such order.

The law of entropy in science shows that the universe does not have the ability to have sustained itself from all eternity. In other words, the universe cannot be eternal and requires a beginning.

It is only fair that school students be exposed to the scientific arguments and evidence on both sides of the creation/evolution issue.





REAL KNOWLEDGEVedic LiteratureWe suggest that a body of knowledge does exist which provides sufficient explanation of the nature and origin of the universe and the living organisms that inhabit it. We refer to the ancient sanskrit Vedic literatures of India, an internally and externally verifiable and consistent presentation of information. Herein we find profuse descriptions of an intelligent creator god and his creation.

Bhagavad GitaPerhaps the most well known of these literatures, The Bhagavad-gita explains the nature of the conscious soul as an indweller in the bodies of various species and it's journey to other bodies after the death of it's present body according to the laws of karma. The living entity has free choice to act properly or improperly and receives the resultant good and bad reactions in terms of success and failure, happiness and distress.

Also encoded within this vast body of literature is a description of the process of bhakti-yoga, a process for obtaining enlightenment and rising beyond the ordinary platform of eating, sleeping, mating and defending. The essence of these teachings may be found in the Bhagavad-gita. Darwin Debunked top



Also available are an article and a video entitled "Scientific Verification of Vedic Knowledge."
FROM vedicsciencenet

Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence — NASA

Sanskrit Artificial Intelligence

Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence — NASA
Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence

by
Rick Briggs
Roacs, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, California


 

Abstract


NASA AstronautIn the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing. These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor.

But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1,000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old.

Sanskrit - XML Generator

First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian Grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given.


Semantic Nets
For the sake of comparison, a brief overview of semantic nets will be given, and examples will be included that will be compared to the Indian approach. After early attempts at machine translation (which were based to a large extent on simple dictionary look-up) failed in their effort to teach a computer to understand natural language, work in AI turned to Knowledge Representation.

Since translation is not simply a map from lexical item to lexical item, and since ambiguity is inherent in a large number of utterances, some means is required to encode what the actual meaning of a sentence is. Clearly, there must be a representation of meaning independent of words used. Another problem is the interference of syntax. In some sentences (for example active/passive) syntax is, for all intents and purposes, independent of meaning. Here one would like to eliminate considerations of syntax. In other sentences the syntax contributes to the meaning and here one wishes to extract it.

Sanskrit Semantic Net System

I will consider a "prototypical" semantic net system similar to that of Lindsay, Norman, and Rumelhart in the hopes that it is fairly representative of basic semantic net theory. Taking a simple example first, one would represent "John gave the ball to Mary" as in Figure 1. Here five nodes connected by four labeled arcs capture the entire meaning of the sentence. This information can be stored as a series of "triples":

give, agent, John

give, object, ball

give, recipient, Mary

give, time, past.

Note that grammatical information has been transformed into an arc and a node (past tense). A more complicated example will illustrate embedded sentences and changes of state:

John Mary

book past

Figure 1.

"John told Mary that the train moved out of the station at 3 o'clock."

As shown in Figure 2, there was a change in state in which the train moved to some unspecified location from the station. It went to the former at 3:00 and from the latter at 3:O0. Now one can routinely convert the net to triples as before.

The verb is given central significance in this scheme and is considered the focus and distinguishing aspect of the sentence. However, there are other sentence types which differ fundamentally from the above examples. Figure 3 illustrates a sentence that is one of "state" rather than of "event ." Other nets could represent statements of time, location or more complicated structures.

A verb, say, "give," has been taken as primitive, but what is the meaning of "give" itself? Is it only definable in terms of the structure it generates? Clearly two verbs can generate the same structure. One can take a set-theoretic approach and a particular give as an element of "giving events" itself a subset of ALL-EVENTS. An example of this approach is given in Figure 4 ("John, a programmer living at Maple St., gives a book to Mary, who is a lawyer"). If one were to "read" this semantic net, one would have a very long text of awkward English: "There is a John" who is an element of the "Persons" set and who is the person who lives at ADRI, where ADRI is a subset of ADDRESS-EVENTS, itself a subset of 'ALL EVENTS', and has location '37 Maple St.', an element of Addresses; and who is a "worker" of 'occupation 1'. . .etc."

The degree to which a semantic net (or any unambiguous, nonsyntactic representation) is cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the degree to which that language is "natural" and deviates from the precise or "artificial." As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero.

The hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such information.

Shastric Sanskrit

The sentence:

(1) "Caitra goes to the village." (graamam gacchati caitra)

receives in the analysis given by an eighteenth-century Sanskrit Grammarian from Maharashtra, India, the following paraphrase:

(2) "There is an activity which leads to a connection-activity which has as Agent no one other than Caitra, specified by singularity, [which] is taking place in the present and which has as Object something not different from 'village'."

The author, Nagesha, is one of a group of three or four prominent theoreticians who stand at the end of a long tradition of investigation. Its beginnings date to the middle of the first millennium B.C. when the morphology and phonological structure of the language, as well as the framework for its syntactic description were codified by Panini. His successors elucidated the brief, algebraic formulations that he had used as grammatical rules and where possible tried to improve upon them. A great deal of fervent grammatical research took place between the fourth century B.C and the fourth century A.D. and culminated in the seminal work, the Vaiakyapadiya by Bhartrhari. Little was done subsequently to advance the study of syntax, until the so-called "New Grammarian" school appeared in the early part of the sixteenth century with the publication of Bhattoji Dikshita's Vaiyakarana-bhusanasara and its commentary by his relative Kaundabhatta, who worked from Benares. Nagesha (1730-1810) was responsible for a major work, the Vaiyakaranasiddhantamanjusa, or Treasury of dejinitive statements of grammarians, which was condensed later into the earlier described work. These books have not yet been translated.

The reasoning of these authors is couched in a style of language that had been developed especially to formulate logical relations with scientific precision. It is a terse, very condensed form of Sanskrit, which paradoxically at times becomes so abstruse that a commentary is necessary to clarify it.

One of the main differences between the Indian approach to language analysis and that of most of the current linguistic theories is that the analysis of the sentence was not based on a noun-phrase model with its attending binary parsing technique but instead on a conception that viewed the sentence as springing from the semantic message that the speaker wished to convey. In its origins, sentence description was phrased in terms of a generative model: From a number of primitive syntactic categories (verbal action, agents, object, etc.) the structure of the sentence was derived so that every word of a sentence could be referred back to the syntactic input categories. Secondarily and at a later period in history, the model was reversed to establish a method for analytical descriptions. In the analysis of the Indian grammarians, every sentence expresses an action that is conveyed both by the verb and by a set of "auxiliaries." The verbal action (Icriyu- "action" or sadhyu-"that which is to be accomplished,") is represented by the verbal root of the verb form; the "auxiliary activities" by the nominals (nouns, adjectives, indeclinables) and their case endings (one of six).

The meaning of the verb is said to be both vyapara (action, activity, cause), and phulu (fruit, result, effect). Syntactically, its meaning is invariably linked with the meaning of the verb "to do". Therefore, in order to discover the meaning of any verb it is sufficient to answer the question: "What does he do?" The answer would yield a phrase in which the meaning of the direct object corresponds to the verbal meaning. For example, "he goes" would yield the paraphrase: "He performs an act of going"; "he drinks": "he performs an act of drinking," etc. This procedure allows us to rephrase the sentence in terms of the verb "to do" or one of its synonyms, and an object formed from the verbal root which expresses the verbal action as an action noun. It still leaves us with a verb form ("he does," "he performs"), which contains unanalyzed semantic information This information in Sanskrit is indicated by the fact that there is an agent who is engaged in an act of going, or drinking, and that the action is taking place in the present time.

Rather that allow the agent to relate to the syntax in this complex, unsystematic fashion, the agent is viewed as a one-time representative, or instantiation of a larger category of "Agency," which is operative in Sanskrit sentences. In turn, "Agency" is a member of a larger class of "auxiliary activities," which will be discussed presently. Thus Caitra is some Caitral or instance of Caitras, and agency is hierarchically related to the auxiliary activities. The fact that in this specific instance the agent is a third person-singular is solved as follows: The number category (singular, dual, or plural) is regarded as a quality of the Agent and the person category (first, second, or third) as a grammatical category to be retrieved from a search list, where its place is determined by the singularity of the agent.

The next step in the process of isolating the verbal meaning is to rephrase the description in such a way that the agent and number categories appear as qualities of the verbal action. This procedure leaves us with an accurate, but quite abstract formulation of the scntcnce: (3) "Caitra is going" (gacchati caitra) - "An act of going is taking place in the present of which the agent is no one other than Caitra qualified by singularity." (atraikatvaavacchinnacaitraabinnakartrko vartamaanakaa- liko gamanaanukuulo vyaapaarah:) (Double vowels indicate length.)

If the sentence contains, besides an agent, a direct object, an indirect object and/or other nominals that are dependent on the principal action of the verb, then in the Indian system these nominals are in turn viewed as representations of actions that contribute to the complete meaning of the sentence. However, it is not sufficient to state, for instance, that a word with a dative case represents the "recipient" of the verbal action, for the relation between the recipient and the verbal action itself requires more exact specification if we are to center the sentence description around the notion of the verbal action. To that end, the action described by the sentence is not regarded as an indivisible unit, but one that allows further subdivisions. Hence a sentence such as: (4) "John gave the ball to Mary" involves the verb Yo give," which is viewed as a verbal action composed of a number of auxiliary activities. Among these would be John's holding the ball in his hand, the movement of the hand holding the ball from John as a starting point toward Mary's hand as the goal, the seizing of the ball by Mary's hand, etc. It is a fundamental notion that actions themselves cannot be perceived, but the result of the action is observable, viz. the movement of the hand. In this instance we can infer that at least two actions have taken place:

(a) An act of movement starting from the direction of John and taking place in the direction of Mary's hand. Its Agent is "the ball" and its result is a union with Mary's hand.

(b) An act of receiving, which consists of an act of grasping whose agent is Mary's hand.

It is obvious that the act of receiving can be interpreted as an action involving a union with Mary's hand, an enveloping of the ball by Mary's hand, etc., so that in theory it might be difficult to decide where to stop this process of splitting meanings, or what the semantic primitives are. That the Indians were aware of the problem is evident from the following passage: "The name 'action' cannot be applied to the solitary point reached by extreme subdivision."

The set of actions described in (a) and (b) can be viewed as actions that contribute to the meaning of the total sentence, vix. the fact that the ball is transferred from John to Mary. In this sense they are "auxiliary actions" (Sanskrit kuruku-literally "that which brings about") that may be isolated as complete actions in their own right for possible further subdivision, but in this particular context are subordinate to the total action of "giving." These "auxiliary activities" when they become thus subordinated to the main sentence meaning, are represented by case endings affixed to nominals corresponding to the agents of the original auxiliary activity. The Sanskrit language has seven case endings (excluding the vocative), and six of these are definable representations of specific "auxiliary activities." The seventh, the genitive, represents a set of auxiliary activities that are not defined by the other six. The auxiliary actions are listed as a group of six: Agent, Object, Instrument, Recipient, Point of Departure, Locality. They are the semantic correspondents of the syntactic case endings: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative and locative, but these are not in exact equivalence since the same syntactic structure can represent different semantic messages, as will be discussed below. There is a good deal of overlap between the karakas and the case endings, and a few of them, such as Point of Departure, also are used for syntactic information, in this case "because of". In many instances the relation is best characterized as that of the allo-eme variety.

To illustrate the operation of this model of description, a sentence involving an act of cooking rice is often quoted: (5) "Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot, over a fire."

Here the total process of cooking is rendered by the verb form "cooks" as well as a number of auxiliary actions:

1. An Agent represented by the person Maitra

2. An Object by the "rice"

3. An Instrument by the "fire"

4. A Recipient by the person Devadatta

5. A Point of Departure (which includes the causal relationship) by the "friendship" (which is between Maitra and Devadatta)

6. The Locality by the "pot"

So the total meaning of the sentence is not complete without the intercession of six auxiliary actions. The action itself can be inferred from a change of the condition of the grains of rice, which started out being hard and ended up being soft.

Again, it would be possible to atomize the meaning expressed by the phrase: "to cook rice": It is an operation that is not a unitary "process", but a combination of processes, such as "to place a pot on the fire, to add fuel to the fire, to fan", etc. These processes, moreover, are not taking place in the abstract, but they are tied to, or "resting on" agencies that are associated with the processes. The word used for "tied to" is a form of the verbal root a-sri, which means to lie on, have recourse to, be situated on." Hence it is possible and usually necessary to paraphrase a sentence such as "he gives" as: "an act of giving residing in him." Hence the paraphrase of sentence (5) will be: (6) "There is an activity conducive to a softening which is a change residing in something not different from rice, and which takes place in the present, and resides in an agent not different from Maitra, who is specified by singularity and has a Recipient not different from Devadatta, an Instrument not different from.. .," etc.

It should be pointed out that these Sanskrit Grammatical Scientists actually wrote and talked this way. The domain for this type of language was the equivalent of today's technical journals. In their ancient journals and in verbal communication with each other they used this specific, unambiguous form of Sanskrit in a remarkably concise way.

Besides the verbal root, all verbs have certain suffixes that express the tense and/or mode, the person (s) engaged in the "action" and the number of persons or items so engaged. For example, the use of passive voice would necessitate using an Agent with an instrumental suffix, whereas the nonpassive voice implies that the agent of the sentence, if represented by a noun or pronoun, will be marked by a nominative singular suffix.

Word order in Sanskrit has usually no more than stylistic significance, and the Sanskrit theoreticians paid no more than scant attention to it. The language is then very suited to an approach that eliminates syntax and produces basically a list of semantic messages associated with the karakas.

An example of the operation of this model on an intransitive sentence is the following:

(7) Because of the wind, a leaf falls from a tree to the ground."

Here the wind is instrumental in bringing about an operation that results in a leaf being disunited from a tree and being united with the ground. By virtue of functioning as instrument of the operation, the term "wind" qualifies as a representative of the auxiliary activity "Instrument"; by virtue of functioning as the place from which the operation commences, the "tree" qualifies to be called "The Point of Departure"; by virtue of the fact that it is the place where the leaf ends up, the "ground" receives the designation "Locality". In the example, the word "leaf" serves only to further specify the agent that is already specified by the nonpassive verb in the form of a personal suffix. In the language it is rendered as a nominative case suffix. In passive sentences other statements have to be made. One may argue that the above phrase does not differ in meaning from "The wind blows a leaf from the tree," in which the "wind" appears in the Agent slot, the "leaf" in the Object slot. The truth is that this phrase is transitive, whereas the earlier one is intransitive. "Transitivity" can be viewed as an additional feature added to the verb. In Sanskrit this process is often accomplished by a suffix, the causative suffix, which when added to the verbal root would change the meaning as follows: "The wind causes the leaf to fall from the tree," and since English has the word "blows" as the equivalent of "causes to fall" in the case of an Instrument "wind," the relation is not quite transparent. Therefore, the analysis of the sentence presented earlier, in spite of its manifest awkwardness, enabled the Indian theoreticians to introduce a clarity into their speculations on language that was theretofore un- available. Structures that appeared radically different at first sight become transparent transforms of a basic set of elementary semantic categories.

It is by no means the case that these analyses have been exhausted, or that their potential has been exploited to the full. On the contrary, it would seem that detailed analyses of sentences and discourse units had just received a great impetus from Nagesha, when history intervened: The British conquered India and brought with them new and apparently effective means for studying and analyzing languages. The subsequent introduction of Western methods of language analysis, including such areas of research as historical and structural linguistics, and lately generative linguistics, has for a long time acted as an impediment to further research along the traditional ways. Lately, however, serious and responsible research into Indian semantics has been resumed, especially at the University of Poona, India. The surprising equivalence of the Indian analysis to the techniques used in applications of Artificial Intelligence will be discussed in the next section.

Equivalence


A comparison of the theories discussed in the first section with the Indian theories of sentence analysis in the second section shows at once a few striking similarities. Both theories take extreme care to define minute details with which a language describes the relations between events in the natural world. In both instances, the analysis itself is a map of the relations between events in the universe described. In the case of the computer-oriented analysis, this mapping is a necessary prerequisite for making the speaker's natural language digestible for the artificial processor; in the case of Sanskrit, the motivation is more elusive and probably has to do with an age-old Indo-Aryan preoccupation to discover the nature of the reality behind the the impressions we human beings receive through the operation of our sense organs. Be it as it may, it is a matter of surprise to discover that the outcome of both trends of thinking-so removed in time, space, and culture-have arrived at a representation of linguistic events that is not only theoretically equivalent but close in form as well. The one superficial difference is that the Indian tradition was on the whole, unfamiliar with the facility of diagrammatic representation, and attempted instead to formulate all abstract notions in grammatical sentences. In the following paragraphs a number of the parallellisms of the two analyses will be pointed out to illustrate the equivalence of the two systems.

Consider the sentence: "John is going." The Sanskrit paraphrase would be

"An Act of going is taking place in which the Agent is 'John' specified by singularity and masculinity."

If we now turn to the analysis in semantic nets, the event portrayed by a set of triples is the following:

1. "going events, instance, go (this specific going event)"

2. "go, agent, John"

3. "go, time, present."

The first equivalence to be observed is that the basic framework for inference is the same. John must be a semantic primitive, or it must have a dictionary entry, or it must be further represented (i.e. "John, number, 1" etc.) if further processing requires more detail (e.g. "HOW many people are going?"). Similarly, in the Indian analysis, the detail required in one case is not necessarily required in another case, although it can be produced on demand (if needed). The point to be made is that in both systems, an extensive degree of specification is crucial in understanding the real meaning of the sentence to the extent that it will allow inferences to be made about the facts not explicitly stated in the sentence

Sanskrit Semantic Net System

The basic crux of the equivalence can be illustrated by a careful look at sentence (5) noted in Part II.

"Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot over a fire "

The semantic net is supplied in Figure 5. The triples corresponding to the net are:

cause, event, friendship

friendship, objectl, Devadatta

friendship, object2, Maitra

cause, result cook

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, instrument, fire

cook, object, rice

cook, on-lot, pot.

The sentence in the Indian analysis is rendered as follows:

The Agent is represented by Maitra, the Object by "rice," the Instrument by "fire," the Recipient by "Devadatta," the Point of Departure (or cause) by "friendship" (between Maitra and Devadatta), the Locality by "pot."

Since all of these syntactic structures represent actions auxiliary to the action "cook," let us write %ook" uext to each karakn and its sentence representat(ion:

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, object, rice

cook, instrument, fire

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, because-of, friendship

friendship, Maitra, Devadatta

cook, locality, pot.

The comparison of the analyses shows that the Sanskrit sentence when rendered into triples matches the analysis arrived at through the application of computer processing. That is surprising, because the form of the Sanskrit sentence is radically different from that of the English. For comparison, the Sanskrit sentence is given here: Maitrah: sauhardyat Devadattaya odanam ghate agnina pacati.

Here the stem forms of the nouns are: Muitra-sauhardya- "friendship," Devadatta -, odana- "gruel," ghatu- "pot," agni- "fire' and the verb stem is paca- "cook". The deviations of the stem forms occuring at the end of each word represent the change dictated by the word's semantic and syntactic position. It should also be noted that the Indian analysis calls for the specification of even a greater amount of grammatical and semantic detail: Maitra, Devadatta, the pot, and fire would all be said to be qualified by "singularity" and "masculinity" and the act of cooking can optionally be expanded into a number of successive perceivable activities. Also note that the phrase "over a fire" on the face of it sounds like a locative of the same form as "in a pot." However, the context indicates that the prepositional phrase describes the instrument through which the heating of the rice takes place and, therefore, is best regarded as an instrument semantically. cause

Of course, many versions of semantic nets have been proposed, some of which match the Indian system better than others do in terms of specific concepts and structure. The important point is that the same ideas are present in both traditions and that in the case of many proposed semantic net systems it is the Indian analysis which is more specific.

A third important similarity between the two treatments of the sentence is its focal point which in both cases is the verb. The Sanskrit here is more specific by rendering the activity as a "going-event", rather than "ongoing." This procedure introduces a new necessary level of abstraction, for in order to keep the analysis properly structured, the focal point ought to be phrased: "there is an event taking place which is one of cooking," rather than "there is cooking taking place", in order for the computer to distinguish between the levels of unspecified "doing" (vyapara) and the result of the doing (phala).

A further similarity between the two systems is the striving for unambiguity. Both Indian and AI schools en-code in a very clear, often apparently redundant way, in order to make the analysis accessible to inference. Thus, by using the distinction of phala and vyapara, individual processes are separated into components which in term are decomposable. For example, "to cook rice" was broken down as "placing a pot on the fire, adding fuel, fanning, etc." Cooking rice also implies a change of state, realized by the phala, which is the heated softened rice. Such specifications are necessary to make logical pathways, which otherwise would remain unclear. For example, take the following sentence:Rice Cooking

"Maitra cooked rice for Devadatta who burned his mouth while eating it."

The semantic nets used earlier do not give any information about the logical connection between the two clauses. In order to fully understand the sentence, one has to be able to make the inference that the cooking process involves the process of "heating" and the process of "making palatable." The Sanskrit grammarians bridged the logical gap by the employment of the phalu/ vyapara distinction. Semantic nets could accomplish the same in a variety of ways:

1. by mapping "cooking" as a change of state, which would involve an excessive amount of detail with too much compulsory inference;

2. by representing the whole statement as a cause (event-result), or

3. by including dictionary information about cooking. A further comparison between the Indian system and the theory of semantic nets points to another similarity: The passive and the active transforms of the same sentence are given the same analysis in both systems. In the Indian system the notion of the "intention of the speaker" (tatparya, vivaksa) is adduced as a cause for distinguishing the two transforms semantically. The passive construction is said to emphasize the object, the nonpassive emphasizes the agent. But the explicit triples are not different. This observation indicates that both systems extract the meaning from the syntax.

Finally, a point worth noting is the Indian analysis of the intransitive phrase (7) describing the leaf falling from the tree. The semantic net analysis resembles the Sanskrit analysis remarkably, but the latter has an interesting flavor. Instead of a change from one location to another, as the semantic net analysis prescribes, the Indian system views the process as a uniting and disuniting of an agent. This process is equivalent to the concept of addition to and deletion from sets. A leaf falling to the ground can be viewed as a leaf disuniting from the set of leaves still attached to the tree followed by a uniting with (addition to) the set of leaves already on the ground. This theory is very useful and necessary to formulate changes or statements of state, such as "The hill is in the valley."

In the Indian system, inference is very complete indeed. There is the notion that in an event of "moving", there is, at each instant, a disunion with a preceding point (the source, the initial state), and a union with the following point, toward the destination, the final state. This calculus-like concept fascillitates inference. If it is stated that a process occurred, then a language processor could answer queries about the state of the world at any point during the execution of the process.

As has been shown, the main point in which the two lines of thought have converged is that the decomposition of each prose sentence into karalca-representations of action and focal verbal-action, yields the same set of triples as those which result from the decomposition of a semantic net into nodes, arcs, and labels. It is interesting to speculate as to why the Indians found it worthwhile to pursue studies into unambiguous coding of natural language into semantic elements. It is tempting to think of them as computer scientists without the hardware, but a possible explanation is that a search for clear, unambigous understanding is inherent in the human being.

Let us not forget that among the great accomplishments of the Indian thinkers were the invention of zero, and of the binary number system a thousand years before the West re-invented them.

Zero Mathematical SymbolBinary Number System

Their analysis of language casts doubt on the humanistic distinction between natural and artificial intelligence, and may throw light on how research in AI may finally solve the natural language understanding and machine translation problems.

References
Bhatta, Nagesha (1963) Vaiyakarana-Siddhanta-Laghu-Manjusa, Benares (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office).

Nilsson, Nils J. Principles of Artificial Intelligence. Palo Alto: Tioga Publishing Co

Bhatta, Nagesha (1974) Parama-Lalu-Manjusa Edited by Pandit Alakhadeva Sharma, Benares (Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office).

Rumelhart, D E. & D A. Norman (1973) Active Semantic Networks as a model of human memory. IJCAI.

Wang, William S-Y (1967) "Final Administrative Report to the National Science Foundation." Project for Machine Translation. University of California, Berkeley. (A biblzographical summary of work done in Berkeley on a program to translate Chinese.)

[THE AI MAGAZINE Spring, 1985 #39]