A prototype-centered approach to adding deduction capability to search engines-the concept of protoform

Existing search engines have many remarkable capabilities. But what is not among them is deduction capability-the capability to answer a query by drawing on information which resides in various pails of the knowledge base or is augmented by the user. An example of a simple query which cannot be answered by any existing search engine is: "How many UC Berkeley alumni were born in California?" In this case, the query and the query-relevant information are crisp. In the query "How many UC Berkeley alumni are wealthy?" the query-relevant information is crisp but the query is fuzzy. The problem-which is not widely recognized-is that much of the information in the knowledge base of a search engine is perception-based. Methods based on bivalent logic and standard probability theory lack capability to operate on perception-based information. A search engine with deduction capability is, in effect, a question-answering system.