In section 22.3 of Society of Mind, Minsky asks the question "what could keep the child from trying to apply the script that works on 'put the apple in the block' to 'put the ocean in the cup'." There are several different theories which could explain how agents enforce these constraints. They vary in both complexity and details.
One possible explanation is that the mind will not generalize to things of different sizes. This explains the difficulty some children have with the idea that their house is "in" Boston. The inside/outside relationships that children can directly experience do not include things that are nearly as large as a house. Thus in this case, the generalization would form an isonome with an Origin which is constrained to be close to the size of an apple, and a Destination which is a container larger than an apple. This can be true even in situations in which size would otherwise seem irrelevant. My young cousin (six years old) refused to believe I could be my mother's daughter, because in her mind, the isonome which described parent and child required that the child be the smaller of the two.
A second theory is related to the function of language. In English, there are many places in sentences where certain types of words will not fit. Some of this is due to the fact that there are functional differences between words. (i.e. a table does not eat) Others, however, are gramatical constraints. A space in a sentence often cannot be filled by just any word of a certain gramatical type. In the sentence "put the ocean in the cup," for instance, the word put is a verb. Thus, in theory, we could say "drink the ocean in the cup," which is quite legal. However, we can also say "drink the ocean," but never "put the ocean." The verb to put requires both a direct object and a location phrase (either a prepositional phrase or an adverb). Similarly, isonomes can be limited in the generalization process: the Origin pronome in this case refers to not merely an object, but certain types of object. In this case, the origin must be an unmoving object smaller than the Destination, and unable to fly. While this seems very complicated, it matches the complexity of language.
However, even this does not deal with the fact that I may have a flower vase and a cd. While the vase is clearly larger than the cd, there is no way to put the cd in the vase, as the opening in the top is far too small. A third approach to explaining the function of de-specialization is one with a more geometric nature. In this explanation, the objects are described by relational box/sizes. (i.e. the origin would be described by the smallest box which would fit inside it, and the destination would be described by the largest box that could fit inside it.) The isonome would contain an Origin and Destination with the requirement that the Origin's box must fit inside the Destination's. While this does not work in the case of objects built to nest together, even adults must check such objects to ensure that one can be put inside the other.
Each of these scenarios involves a statement triggering an isonome which has been generalized from the polyneme describing the action "put the apple in the pail". When a new situation arises, (i.e. an internal or external command to put the ocean in a cup) the agents fill in isonomes until one has the correct slots for the situation. If none ends up being entirely right, then the closest is the one that is triggered.
erinp@mit.edu