Fundamentals of representation I: A traditional philosophy

Abstract Assumptions about the nature of representation can be expected to have considerable influence on the way in which the project of computational representation is approached. This paper examines a traditional philosophy of representation which has driven much of the project up to now. The use of propositional and predicate logic, and of various notational variations on that logic such as semantic nets, conceptual dependency, frames and scripts, has presupposed this philosophy—as indeed has the physical symbol system hypothesis of AI. This traditional philosophy is expounded and its weaknesses exposed, leading to an alternative philosophy of representation which might be expected to prove particularly helpful in the field of law.