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5 Some extensions of the model

5.2 Necessity


In a similar way to bottom we can also define a special top node (T). This acts like the positive terminal in a circuit - it forces certain nodes to be activated. Thus nodes that it connects to with an unconditional arc must be necessarily active. This can be seen to formalise a type of necessity, , defined as . For completeness one could view all unconditional arcs as arcs that are conditional upon T.

The presence of both top and bottom allows for the possibility of strong inconsistency - a sort of "short circuit" from T to . This might indeed occur when mislearning has occurred or when there is a basic conflict in the agents goals - it might thus be the trigger for a radical rewiring.


A Simple-Minded Network Model with Context-like Objects - Bruce Edmonds - 13 FEB 97
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