A Connectionist Treatment of Negation and Inconsistency

A connectionist model capable of encoding positive as well as negated knowledge and using such knowledge during rapid reasoning is described. The model explains how an agent can hold inconsistent beliefs in its long-term memory without being “aware” that its beliefs are inconsistent, but detect a contradiction whenever inconsistent beliefs that are within a certain inferential distance of each other become co-active during an episode of reasoning. Thus the model is not logically omniscient, but detects contradictions whenever it tries to use inconsistent knowledge. The model also explains how limited attentional focus or action under time pressure can lead an agent to produce an erroneous response. A biologically significant feature of the model is that it uses only local inhibition to encode negated knowledge. The model encodes and propagates dynamic bindings using temporal synchrony.