From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!princeton!shine.Princeton.EDU!harnad Mon May 25 14:05:55 EDT 1992
Article 5710 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: harnad@shine.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: on what meaning means
Summary: Hellen Keller was not a symbol system
Keywords: symbols, grounding, analog
Message-ID: <1992May17.212856.2199@Princeton.EDU>
Date: 17 May 92 21:28:56 GMT
References: <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May17.071803.28448@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992May17.141053.7695@news.acns.nwu.edu>
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In article <1992May17.141053.7695@news.acns.nwu.edu> learn@speedy.acns.nwu.edu (William J. Vajk) writes:
>In article <1992May17.071803.28448@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Antun Zirdum writes:
>
>>In article <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu> Michael Gemar writes:
>
>>>Imagine trying to learn how to read Chinese from a Chinese-Chinese
>>>dictionary.  You want to know what "squiggle-squoggle" means.  So
>>>you look it up, and its definition reads: "Squoggle squiggle-squiggle
>>>squaggle squoggle."  Do you now know what "squiggle-squoggle" means? 
>>>Of course not.  Is there any way to bootstrap yourself *solely* using
>>>the Chinese-Chinese dictionary?  No.     
>
>>              How did Helen Kehler get bootstrapped?
>>It seems to me that a dictionary lookup intelligence
>>will not be able to refer to much except words, but
>>that does not mean that it cannot refer to ANYTHING.
>
>Helen Keller didn't suddenly bootstrap easily using a newly built neural
>network and some single piece of new information. She was led to water,
>so to speak, after a memorable life experience of well over a decade.

Helen Keller was not just a computer without eyes and ears, any
more than Stephen Hawking is a paralyzed computer. Analogies like
this beg the question by presupposing what they're trying to show.

A symbol system that is systematically interpretable as a
Chinese-Chinese dictionary is just as ungrounded if it is connected to
another symbol system that is interpretable as encyclopedic knowledge,
and yet another one that is interpretable as objects in the real world.
Singly and collectively, they are just squiggles and squoggles, and
there is no way to bootstrap to meaning from that, no matter how
systematically interepretable it all is, and no matter how coherently
the interpretations square with one another.

Grounding has to be real, through real robotic interactions with the
real world of objects, Totally Turing-Indistinguishable from our own
interactions with that same world.
 
                                      -- Stevan Harnad

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

Harnad, S. (1990) The Symbol Grounding Problem.  Physica D 42: 335-346.

Harnad, S. (1990) Against Computational Hermeneutics. (Invited
commentary of Eric Dietrich's Computationalism)
Social Epistemology 4: 167-172.

Harnad, S. (1990) Lost in the hermeneutic hall of mirrors. Invited
Commentary on: Michael Dyer: Minds, Machines, Searle and Harnad.
Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence
2: 321 - 327.

Harnad, S. (1991) Other bodies, Other minds: A machine incarnation
of an old philosophical problem. Minds and Machines 1: 43-54.

Harnad, S. (1992) Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling
Cognition.  In: A. Clarke and  R. Lutz (Eds) Connectionism in Context
Springer Verlag.

Hayes, P., Harnad, S., Perlis, D. & Block, N. (1992) Virtual Symposium
on the Virtual Mind. Minds and Machines (in press)

Harnad, S. (1993, in press) Icon, Category, Symbol:  Essays on the
Foundations and Fringes of Cognition. Cambridge University
Press.

-- 
Stevan Harnad  Department of Psychology  Princeton University
harnad@clarity.princeton.edu / harnad@pucc.bitnet / srh@flash.bellcore.com 
harnad@learning.siemens.com / harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu / (609)-921-7771


