Objects and agents

    Figures 10 and 11 demonstrate the ability of the knowledge representation system to reorganize the     primary and secondary attributes of a concepts as needed. Figure 10 shows the original spaceship concepts near the beginning of the story, Zoo. The owner of a spaceship is not important to its functioning, nor is its color or current location. However, its cargo, speed, and so on are crucial aspects of what makes it a spaceship. Thus, these represent primary attributes. If the concept is reconsidered to be a zoo rather than a simple spaceship, then some alterations are needed (see Figure 11). The owner of a zoo is important to the functioning of the zoo, as is the fact that zoos must possess both viewers and viewees.

  

Figure 10: Partial representation of the spaceship object, as a spaceship

  

Figure 11: Partial representation of the spaceship object, as a zoo

Finally, since agents are merely a volitional subclass of objects, the representation required for them contains nothing unusual.