ABSTRACT

We argue that the ideas of Bertrand Russell, a famous English philosopher and logician, have a bearing on the philosophical foundations of one of the sub–fields of AI, called qualitative spatial reasoning. The research conducted within that field focuses on non–numerical reasoning about regions of space designed to mimic human spatial behaviour and thus avoid the artificiality of the numerical approach. After briefly describing the main characteristics of this field, we analyse Russell's works on geometry. We show that despite major differences in how the subject matter is treated, these publications do have a common core that is related to the non–numerical, qualitative parts of geometry. Therefore, we argue that Russell should be viewed as a forefather of qualitative spatial reasoning on par with Whitehead or Leśniewski. Moreover, we believe that the efforts within qualitative spatial reasoning should be geared more towards the types of geometry he describes.

摘要

我们认为，英国著名哲学家和逻辑学家伯特兰·罗素 (Bertrand Russell) 的思想与人工智能子领域之一的哲学基础有关，称为定性空间推理。该领域内进行的研究侧重于对旨在模仿人类空间行为的空间区域的非数值推理，从而避免数值方法的人为性。在简要描述了该领域的主要特征后，我们分析了罗素在几何方面的著作。我们表明，尽管主题的处理方式存在重大差异，但这些出版物确实具有与几何的非数字、定性部分相关的共同核心。因此，我们认为罗素应该被视为与怀特海或 Leśniewski 相提并论的定性空间推理的先驱。而且，