Reflexive Reasoning with Multiple Instantiation in a Connectionist Reasoning System with a Type Hierarchy

Abstract We describe a hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning system that integrates a rule-based reasoner with a type hierarchy and can accommodate multiple dynamic instantiations of predicates. The system—which is an extension of the reasoner described in Shastri and Ajjanagadde (1990)maintains and propagates variable bindings using temporally synchronous (i.e. in-phase)firing of appropriate nodes, and can perform a broad class of reasoning with extreme efficiency. The type hierarchy allows the system to encode generic facts such as ‘cats prey on bird’ and rules such as ‘if x preys on y then y is scared of ’ and use them to infer that Tweety the canary is scared of Sylvester the cat. The system can also encode qualified rules such as ‘if an animate agent collides with a solid object then the agent gets hur’. The ability to accommodate multiple dynamic instantiations of any predicate allows the system to handle a much broader class of inferences, including those involving transitivity and bounded ...