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Abstract:
(Invited Talk)
The Symbol Grounding Problem concerns the question of how to
connect meaningless symbols to what they mean, rather than to
just further meaningless symbols, all systematically
interpretable to an outside mind, but meaningless in and of
themselves. Evolution has clearly solved this problem in the case
of both natural language and the language of thought. How has it
done so? Some very simple artificial-life simulations of the
adaptive advantages of symbolic "theft" over sensorimotor "toil"
will be presented as a hint of how and why this might have taken
place.
Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. & Lancaster, J. B. (eds.)
(1976) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences 280.
Harnad, S. (1990a)
The Symbol Grounding Problem Physica
D 42: 335-346.
Harnad, S. (1996b)
The Origin of Words: A Psychophysical Hypothesis
In Velichkovsky B & Rumbaugh, D. (Eds.) "Communicating
Meaning: Evolution and Development of Language. NJ: Erlbaum: pp
27-44.
Cangelosi, A. & Harnad, S. (1998)
The Adaptive Advantage of Symbolic Theft Over Sensorimotor Toil:
Grounding Language in Perceptual Categories
Presented at the Second International Conference on the
Evolution of Language, London, April 1998.
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