Taxonomic Lattice Structures for Situation Recognition

The kinds of intelligent computer assistants that we would like to be able to construct are very much like intelligent organisms in their own right. Imagine for a moment an intelligent organism trying to get along in the world (find enough food, stay out of trouble, satisfy basic needs, etc.). The most valuable service played by an internal knowledge base for such an organism is to repeatedly answer questions like "what's going on out there?", "can it harm me?", "how can I avoid/placate it?", "Is it good to eat?", "Is there any special thing I should do about it?", etc. To support this kind of activity, a substantial part of the knowledge base must be organized as a recognition device for classifying and identifying situations in the world. The major purpose of this situation recognition is to locate internal procedures which are applicable (appropriate, permitted, mandatory, etc.) to the current situation.