Knowledge Needs and Information Extraction: Towards an Artificial Consciousness

Chapter 13

Non-Transversal Text Mining Techniques

13.1. Constructivist activity

Text mining is a rigorous activity which is based on electronic formatted data, with reproducible and validated methods. The overall philosophical environment stems from two antecedents, which are not mutually exclusive. The first is Gödel’s theorem; the other is mathematical constructivism. Constructivism [BIS 67] is a stance toward mathematics which holds that we can only prove the existence of mathematical objects by constructing them. In reality, deductive arguments from absurdist reasoning prove nothing.

Gödel’s argument [GÖD 30] holds that any theory (or language) accepts non-deductible (non-demonstrable) propositions, considering only the intrinsic properties of the language. In other words, a theory is consistent if no contradiction can be proven from its axioms. The theorem is stated as follows:

“If T is a recursively axiomatizable, consistent theory which proves all the formulae Σ₀ true in N, there is a formula G, the negation of a formula Σ₁, which is true in N but is not demonstrable in T.”

The process of prototyping developed in [TUR 00; TUR 04; TUR 12] involves the design of computer systems whose functions are developed in co-construction with users, with the aim of solving problems using computational models. The process is often but not exclusively iterative, and leads to an architecture that expresses an information-processing workflow equivalent to an approach of feasibility demonstration ...