Deep Fusion of Computational and Symbolic Processing

Book excerpt: Symbolic processing has limitations highlighted by the symbol grounding problem. Computational processing methods, like fuzzy logic, neural networks, and statistical methods have appeared to overcome these problems. However, they also suffer from drawbacks in that, for example, multi-stage inference is difficult to implement. Deep fusion of symbolic and computational processing is expected to open a new paradigm for intelligent systems. Symbolic processing and computational processing should interact at all abstract or computational levels. For this undertaking, attempts to combine, hybridize, and fuse these processing methods should be thoroughly investigated and the direction of novel fusion approaches should be clarified. This book contains the current status of this attempt and also discusses future directions.