Summary: In these articles we introduce the idea of word-sensibility. The immediate aim is a commonsense acquisition & ontology for machine learning. The overarching goal is to develop the idea as a tool for grappling with the general matters of commonsense experience. Here is an overview.

The Quadranym Model of Word-Sensibility (Q): An Ecological Systems Perspective On Word-Level-Concepts & Contextual Unitizations – Non-Mental-Representation Representation Design Before Define Approach.

“Word meaning has played a somewhat marginal role in early contemporary philosophy of language, which was primarily concerned with the structural features of sentences and showed less interest in the format of lexical representations and in the nature of the word-level input to compositional processes. Nowadays, it is well-established that the way we account for word meaning is bound to have a major impact in tipping the balance in favor or against a given picture of the fundamental properties of human language.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)


Brief Description: Environments are a place for our responses and our responses are a place for our words. The purpose of the Q model is to identify responsive units and deal with how they dynamically organize and interact as topical/contextual ecosystems. The theoretical focus on words and word-sensibility is more ontological then compositional and generally aligned with the views of Naive Realism. The aim is to intervene with the notion of sensibility and not an attempt to define it. The word-sensibility model is proposed as a way to illustrate an Ecological Systems Perspective on contextual unitizations. Theoretically, it models a way to facilitate an orientative exchange so to share normative type information with others.

Preview From Post: Psyche & Eros

  • The dynamic relationships between a society of organisms and their world, between the organisms, and between the organisms and their symbols, is an evolutionary progression towards self awareness. Although this is not our primary inquiry, it will be a recurring consideration in the illustration of the Q model. A word is an experience rendered a contextual artifact that is dynamically actual and situationally potential. A word’s word-sensibility dynamicity encompasses environmental, social and personal potentials.

System Description: The Q model is a method for a commonsense representation that introduces the idea of motivated dynamical-contexts anchoring word-level concepts, we refer to it as Word-Sensibility. Any word in the system can be considered a motivated dynamical-context. Theoretically, it is about the responses that humans share that help advance normative understanding and practice. We call the theory, ‘The Principle of the Orientation of Interactivity’.  At its core, word-sensibility is that which prescribes internal and external distinctions to contextual units. Otherwise speaking, it aims to model an agents internal responses to external occurrences at different nested levels in the system. This is illustrated in Q topics (aka Q units): scalable contextual units, from word-topics to theme-topics. Various metaphysical notions apply, such as, part/whole, plurality/unity, being/becoming, time and space. The model’s approach toward these notions introduces a self replicating pattern; a framework of categorical dimensions able to scale virtual levels of thoughts or mental resources, attended and unattended. The system aims to represent relationships between nested contextual units as a way to illustrate metaphorical thinking. All of it attempts to describe how ecological constructs make impressions on our sense making abilities. Central to this process is the idea that there is the immanent and what necessarily must transcend the immanent, by which this implicates the skills, volition and resources that one has to cope in the world. Word-sensibility is proposed as a hypothetical construct pertaining to affective and conative components. It is about habits, emotions and volition reinforced by the environment. The Q is a theoretical lexicography. It’s most practical application is as a supplement for lexical ontologies designed for natural language processing. Essentially, it is a hybrid between a lexical knowledgebase and a commonsense knowledge base. Basic goals include, improving tractability, heuristics and commonsense knowledge data.

From The About Page:

Sensibility: We choose the term sensibility as a general reference to these processes. We like the term sensibility because it means a responsiveness toward something, and because, on the general topic of commonsense, reason and sensibility are interesting to us in contrast. These days the term sensibility normally refers to subjective preferences, for instance, one might assert, “Scifi movies don’t really suit my sensibility.” In the urban dictionary, sensibility is one’s own ability to react/respond to the artistic style of another. Essentially, in this approach, sensibility is about organismic behaviors enacted socially, on layers of sense making dynamics, such as, coping, skills, valence, habits, compulsions, synergies. Word-sensibility isn’t something we can find in ourselves, we only find it through each other.

  • Generally, we mean the term Sensibility as, a responsiveness toward something. What we mean specifically is, a responsiveness toward a topic, by which, a unitization of other separate topics is cued, in which, the unit effect is a capacitance to aptly elect the probable truth conditions for that topic.

(Q-Topic: scalable contextual units, from word-topics to theme-topics)

From the Model Page:

A Way of Thinking:  We will illustrate a framework to render words optimal, concise and responsive contextual units. In our approach, the contextual unitizations are not primarily situational contextualizations but primarily dynamical contextualizations, as we aim to illustrate in these posts. Situational Context describes the reasons why something is occurring and will sometimes include the appropriate behaviors associated with it. Basically, the Situational Context is the communicative ability to present or understand the objective circumstances in which an event occurs. We will introduce and illustrate a dynamical context, it is something different and can be summarized as follows:

  • Dynamical Context: a situation resonates with a preexisting psychology, a predetermined expectation for behavior within that situation, and produces a synergy response, reshaped for the moment. 
  • Dynamical Contextual Systems: a dynamical contextual system is one characterized by the potential for multiple dynamic areas and interactions between them.

Next, Theory Articles: To illustrate what we mean by dynamical context, a distinction between word-sensibility and word-rationality will be made. We’ll first work through the intersection between what is word-sensibility and what is word-rationality and then we will work through the dynamic interactions that occur. The dynamic interactions between these terms is about how a word’s being and becoming can be described from an ecological systems perspective. The process begins with procedural scripts that are then generalized into dynamical contextual units (see, Model Page). The word-sensibility perspective we are putting forth is not so much about sentential compositions or semantic relationships found in situational contexts, but about our dynamic sense of things. In this way, we speculate on what might afford words their contextual grip in the first place.

Next Post: Theory & Approach