M. Minsky, A Framework for Representing Knowledge. The Psychology of Computer Vision, P. H. Winston (ed.), McGraw-Hill 1975.

Author of the summary: J. William Murdock, 1997, murdock@cc.gatech.edu

Cite this paper for:

• "The 'chunks' of reasoning, language, memory, and 'perception' ought to be larger and more structured, and their factual and procedural contents must be more intimately connected in order to explain the apparent power and speed of mental activities."

Keywords: Frames, Symbolic, Vision, Natural Language

Systems: None

Summary: Briefly describes frame systems as a formalism for
representing knowledge and then concentrates on the issue of what the
content of knowledge should be in specific domains.  Argues that
vision should be viewed symbolically with an emphasis on forming
expectations and then using details to fill in slots in those
expectations.  Discusses the enormous problem of the volume of
background common sense knowledge required to understand even very
simple natural language texts and suggests that networks of frames are
a reasonable approach to represent such knowledge.  Discusses the
concept of expectation further including ways to adapt to and
understand expectation failures.  Argues that numerical approaches to
knowledge representation are inherently limited.

Summary author's notes:

• This summary came from a file which had the following disclaimer: "The following summaries are the completely unedited and often hastily composed interpretations of a single individual without any sort of systematic or considered review. As such it is very likely that at least some of the following text is incomplete, inadequate, misleading, or simply wrong. One might view this as a very preliminary draft of a survey paper that will probably never be completed. The author disclaims all responsibility for the accuracy or use of this document; this is not an official publication of the Georgia Institute of Technology or the College of Computing thereof, and the opinions expressed here may not even fully match the fully considered opinions of the author much less the general opinions of the aformentioned organizations."