Perspective Switching Using Theories and Interpretations

An important aspect of intelligence is the ability to switch perspectives. In the course of reasoning about a particular subject matter, it can be convenient to change from one perspective of the subject matter to another perspective, which is often at a different level of abstraction. For example, in some situations it may be advantageous to view a building as a collection of floors and in other situations as a collection of wings. If the arrangement of the rooms is not important for the task at hand, the building might be viewed as simply an unstructured collection of rooms. These are three perspectives on how a building can be decomposed. Utilizing multiple perspectives and freeing moving from one to another is a powerful method for both managing complexity and organizing knowledge. The key idea behind this method is to always employ the “right” perspective for each reasoning task. This talk will address the following two questions: