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Article 5856 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding and Symbols
Message-ID: <1992May22.225742.5407@spss.com>
Date: 22 May 92 22:57:42 GMT
References: <1992May20.181548.7296@cs.ucf.edu> <1992May20.201113.3883@spss.com> <1992May22.173314.3029@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992May22.173314.3029@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu 
(Michael Gemar) writes:
>I believe you've missed the point.  If "grounding" is due to transducers,
>then all symbols must be grounded either *directly* through transducer
>patterns, that is, *sensory* stimuli, or be grounded by being composed of
>symbols which are grounded in the former way.  I simply *don't*
>see how one can ground "unmarried" in this fashion - what sensory
>stimuli define unmarried?  

Let's look at some words which demonstrate the problem more clearly:
"thought", "dream", "anger", "imagination."  These words *refer* to events,
states, or faculties within the mind (or maybe only to elements within
our *model* of our mind).  How are they grounded?  Not through
perception, surely.  Perhaps references to physical things have to be
perceptually grounded, but references to mental phenomena merely have to 
connect up with our mental model?

I'm going to have to think about this one.  However, if there is an answer,
we can use it for "married", which presumably contains both mental components
(e.g. the intention to marry) and physical ones (e.g. "man", "woman").


