Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!harnad
From: harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Tech Report: Symbol Grounding Problem
Summary: It's not just a matter of hooking 'em all together...
Keywords: connectionism language categorization Searle symbol-systems
Message-ID: <9795@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 7 Aug 89 05:12:06 GMT
References: <9753@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <5761@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 31



James Salsman (jps@cat.cmu.edu) of Carnegie Mellon University wrote:

> THE SYMBOL GROUNDING PROBLEM... No problem:
>
> The    |         /"Iconic"\  Distributed  /    \        /    \Predicates &/
> Outside|--------<  Buffer  >-------------< EPAM >------< SOAR >----------< LTM
> World  | Signals \  STM   / Representation\    / Symbols\    / Productions\

This is exactly the kind of naive "hook-em-all-up-together" modularism that I
wrote the preprint in question in order to refute. Now one can either hold
onto these unexamined beliefs (and the dead-ends they lead to in cognitive
modeling) or wake up and smell the coffee...

                   REFERENCES

Harnad, S. (submitted to Physica D) "The Symbol Grounding Problem."
           Presented at CNLS Conference on Emergent Computation, 1989.

           (1989) "Minds, Machines and Searle." Journal of Experimental
           and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 1: 5 - 25.

           (1987) "Category Induction and Representation" In: (S. Harnad, Ed.)
           Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York:
           Cambridge University Press.
-- 
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