CHAPTER 2 – Declarative Knowledge

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the conceptualization of declarative knowledge. Intelligent behavior depends on the knowledge an entity has about its environment. Much of this knowledge is descriptive and can be expressed in declarative form. The formalization of knowledge in declarative form begins with a conceptualization. This includes the objects presumed or hypothesized to exist in the world and their interrelationships. When concentrating on spatial relationships, one would probably ignore functions that do not have any spatial significance, such as the rotate function that maps blocks into blocks according to the alphabetic order of their labels. A relation is the second kind of interrelationship among objects in a universe of discourse. No matter how one choose to conceptualize the world, it is important to realize that there are other conceptualizations as well. There need not be any correspondence among the objects, functions, and relations in one conceptualization and the objects, functions, and relations in another.