[Attempto] RACE thinks if Chicago and Detroit are cities, then every city is Chicago

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

> On 16 Nov 2019, at 24:14 , Tanner Swett <tannerswett at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've noticed that RACE can make some questionable inferences given axioms containing proper names.
> 
> I tried the following using the RACE client at http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/race/:
> 
> Input:
> Axioms: Chicago is a city. Detroit is a city.
> Theorems: Every city is Chicago.
> 
> Output: True.
> 
> Both axioms need to be present in order for RACE to conclude that the theorems follow; "Chicago is a city." alone is not enough for RACE to conclude that every city is Chicago. The axioms "Chicago is a city. Chicago is a city." also don't suffice, but if I give it "Chicago is a city. A city is Chicago.", that *is* enough for it to conclude that every city is Chicago.
> 
> A similar problem occurs if I mention multiple different types of objects:
> 
> Input:
> Axioms: Chicago is a city. France is a country
> Theorems: France is a city.
> 
> Output: True.
> 
> All of these counterintuitive theorems are said to be true because of "Prolog Axiom transcompadj2: Transitivity of comparative adjectives."
> 
> Am I misunderstanding what proper names mean to RACE, or is this a bug?
> 
> Tanner Swett
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Dear Tanner Swett

Thank you for testing RACE.

You are right, this is a bug in the auxiliary axiom transcompadj2 that I recently introduced. I am working on this and will let you know once I will have removed the bug.

Best regards.

Norbert E. Fuchs
Institute of Computational Linguistics
University of Zurich