From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Mon May 25 14:06:48 EDT 1992
Article 5805 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Grounding and Symbols
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992May20.170019.26095@kbsw1> <1992May20.181548.7296@cs.ucf.edu> <1992May20.201113.3883@spss.com>
Message-ID: <1992May21.144946.291@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 May 1992 14:49:46 GMT

In article <1992May20.201113.3883@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992May20.181548.7296@cs.ucf.edu> gomez@barros.cs.ucf.edu (Fernando Gomez) writes:
>>I have trouble with the idea of "grounding" as presented  by
>>Harnad  and others.  I read his paper in JTAI. The source of
>>my difficulty is that most symbols (I should say concepts  -
>>should   he?)   cannot  be  grounded  in  reality.  Consider
>>"bachelor." How do you ground this one? It is clear that you
>>do  not  find  out that somebody is a bachelor by looking at
>>his face, or touching him, etc.  Stimuli do not  help  here.
>
>"Bachelor" is more abstract than "male", but not any more divorced from 
>real-world knowledge.  

I think there's a difficulty of what's meant by "real-world" here.
"Bachelor" may be grounded in the real world, but Stevan would have us believe
that it is grounded in *perception* (transduced input). This seem dubious.
What separates Stevan's position from bad old phenomenalism?

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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