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15 Emergent Networks of Intelligence

artefact
|
motor
vehicle
/ | \
motorcar go-kart truck
/ | \
hatch- compact gas
back guzzler

Fig. 15.2: A typical, though small, subnetwork of WordNet's hierarchical network.

Once elements of hierarchical structure exist via the hierarchical structure of language and
physical reality, then a richer and broader hierarchy can be expected to accumulate on top
of it, because importance spreading and inference control will implicitly and automatically be
guided by the existing hierarchy. That is, in the language of Chaotic Logic [Goe94] and patternist
theory, hierarchical structure is an "autopoietic attractor" – once it's there it will tend to enrich
itself and maintain itself. AsymmetricHebbianLinks arranged in a hierarchy will tend to cause
importance to spread up or down the hierarchy, which will lead other cognitive processes to look
for patterns between Atoms and their hierarchical parents or children, thus potentially building
more hierarchical links. Chains of InheritanceLinks pointing up and down the hierarchy will lead
PLN to search for more hierarchical links – e.g. most simply, A → B → C where C is above
B is above A in the hierarchy, will naturally lead inference to check the viability of A → C
by deduction. There is also the possibility to introduce a special DefaultInheritanceLink, as
discussed in Chapter 34 of Part 2, but this isn't actually necessary to obtain the inferential
maintenance of a robust hierarchical network.

15.3.2 Associative, Heterarchical Networks

Heterarchy is in essence a simpler structure than hierarchy: it simply refers to a network in
which nodes are linked to other nodes with which they share important relationships. That is,
there should be a tendency that if two nodes are often important in the same contexts or for

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