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Article 5820 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding and Symbols
Message-ID: <1992May21.192058.50532@spss.com>
>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Date: Thu, 21 May 1992 19:20:58 GMT
References: <1992May20.181548.7296@cs.ucf.edu> <1992May20.201113.3883@spss.com> <1992May21.024726.11986@cs.ucf.edu>
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In article <1992May21.024726.11986@cs.ucf.edu> gomez@barros.cs.ucf.edu (Fernando Gomez) writes:
>Certainly, your term "bochelor" is meaningless, while "bachelor"
>is meaningfull. 

Yes, but why?  You seemed to maintain that "bachelor" was simply put 
together out of lower-level concepts-- viz. "male" and "unmarried."
Well, "borchelor" is built the same way-- out of the concepts "beige",
"bearded", "amateur", and "on fire."  So far as I can see you should
maintain that it is just as meaningful as "bachelor."

>The fact that "bachelor" refers to real-world
>knowledge does not imply that is grounded. 

It's grounded both indirectly, through the concepts which comprise it, and
directly, through its own real-world connections and connotations.

"Borchelor" possesses whatever grounding it can derive from its component
concepts, but nothing else; it's intended to show that words are *not*
merely defined in terms of other words.

>Does it follow that "unicorn" is not grounded? 

It's grounded by its connection to real-world concepts such as "horse" and
"horn", and also by its rich history in myth and legend.  Surely there's
no dispute that it's meaningful to talk about imaginary things.  On the
other hand I'd maintain that it's impossible to imagine things without
borrowing concepts from the real world.


