c/o Gärdenfors: "Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces"

Personal circumstances mean that over the past decade I've given up on several memberships and hence the benefits that were to be had. The British Computer Society was invaluable, and I'm sure still is even at the 'Associate' level. In addition to the Nursing Specialist Group, the Expert Systems Group, Medical Informatics, SocioTechnical and a Methods group have proved an engrossing distraction and a more remote source of ongoing interest. I'm not sure if this is persistence, or stubbornness, but it surely qualifies as sustainable - as I hope this blog demonstrates.

Following the workshops in 2012, and 2016 on Conceptual Spaces I checked online for developments. Amongst the results a paper (added to Zotero):

"Another field of learning that is required for robotic reasoning
about causation and for communicating, for example in a
planning situation, is action categorization. Representations of
actions in terms of conceptual spaces, such as those proposed
by, for example, Chella et al. (2001), Gärdenfors (2014), and
Gharaee et al. (2017a,b), provide a potentially fruitful method for
implementations. Simulating an action and then using the event
mapping that has been learned to predict a result vector, can then
be used to generate plans and to reason about complex situations.
In this way, simulations can provide the robotic system the power
to imagine events that is needed to understand the physical, social
and, eventually, the emotional world we live in.

The event structure has not yet been implemented in any
concrete system. However, a cognitively motivated architecture
for holistic AI systems, including robotic ones, that integrates
machine learning and knowledge representation has been
proposed in Gärdenfors et al. (2019). The central idea of the
proposal is to use ‘event boards’ representing components of
events as an analogy to blackboards that formed the backbone
in some earlier AI systems." p.8. [with my emphasis].

For years - ever since learning and applying Hodges' model I've been carrying a requirement - a project. As Prof. Gärdenfors notes blackboards were an approach artificial intelligence systems, plus frames, cases, neural networks and others. The Health Career Model can be viewed as a series of boards, frames, conceptual spaces and compound threshold concepts. With so many purported forms of informatics and literacy, h2cm can ultimately represent the general state of affairs. It is situated (previously):

h2cm = 'GI - General Intelligence'?

'general problem'

Englemore, Robert; Morgan, Tony (1988). Blackboard Systems.
Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-17431-1.
McCord Nelson, Marilyn / W.T. Illingworth
(1990) A Practical Guide to Neural Nets.
Addison-Wesley, ISBN 10: 0201523760.

Over the years, I've been asked about the number of books on shelves and boxed. This week on BBC Radio 4 or Times Radio(?), I caught a snippet of how we hold on to books and why. Your library: can be part of your identity. 

Knowing the life story of a resident in a nursing home, they may be comforted carrying a book; if staff can manage their anxiety about its potential use as a weapon in the event of an altercation. Having several books on a window sill [they do have a window?], can help. The light damage to the book pales in contrast to the reduced anxiety.

I realise what books mean to me - on 'display' even though nobody else sees them and even as I try to reduce the count. I still hold on to some cherished titles, and will return to those above. Originally, I picked up the Health Career Model and created the now archived website, so it would not gather dust on the shelf. Without action now though - there isn't much difference.

Gärdenfors P (2020) Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces. Front. Psychol. 11:630. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00630