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From: harnad@mind.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: The symbol grounding problem
Message-ID: <843@mind.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Jun-87 15:59:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: mind.843
Posted: Sat Jun 13 15:59:12 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Jun-87 01:44:38 EDT
References: <764@mind.UUCP> <768@mind.UUCP> <770@mind.UUCP> <6174@diamond.BBN.COM> <6544@diamond.BBN.COM>
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 39
Xref: utgpu comp.ai:472 comp.cog-eng:111
Summary: Behavioral and functional considerations have independent content



aweinste@Diamond.BBN.COM (Anders Weinstein)
of BBN Laboratories, Inc., Cambridge, MA writes:

>	X has intrinsic intentionality (is "grounded") iff X can pass the TTT.
>	I thought from your postings that you shared this frankly behavioristic
>	philosophy... So what could it come to to say that symbolic AI must
>	inevitably choke on the grounding problem? Since grounding == behavioral
>	capability, all this claim can mean is that symbolic AI won't be able
>	to generate full TTT performance. I think, incidentally, that you're
>	probably right in this claim. However,...To say that your approach
>	is better grounded is only to say that it may work better (ie.
>	generate TTT performance); there's just no independent content to the
>	claim of "groundedness". Or do you have some non-behavioral definition
>	of intrinsic intentionality that I haven't yet heard?

I think that this discussion has become repetitious, so I'm going to
have to cut down on the words. Our disagreement is not substantive.
I am not a behaviorist. I am a methodological epiphenomenalist.
Intentionality and consciousness are not equivalent to behavioral
capacity, but behavioral capacity is our only objective basis for
inferring that they are present. Apart from behavioral considerations,
there are also functional considerations: What kinds of internal
processes (e.g., symbolic and nonsymbolic) look as if they might work?
and why? and how? The grounding problem accordingly has functional aspects
too. What are the right kinds of causal connections to ground a
system? Yes, the test of successful grounding is the TTT, but that
still leaves you with the problem of which kinds of connections are
going to work. I've argued that top-down symbol systems hooked to
transducers won't, and that certain hybrid bottom-up systems might. All
these functional considerations concern how to ground symbols, they are
distinct from (though ultimately, of course, dependent on) behavioral
success, and they do have independent content.
-- 

Stevan Harnad                                  (609) - 921 7771
{bellcore, psuvax1, seismo, rutgers, packard}  !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet       harnad@mind.Princeton.EDU