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Article 5837 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: gomez@barros.cs.ucf.edu (Fernando Gomez)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding and Symbols
Message-ID: <1992May22.031917.25222@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 22 May 92 03:19:17 GMT
References: <1992May20.201113.3883@spss.com> <1992May21.024726.11986@cs.ucf.edu> <1992May21.192058.50532@spss.com>
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In article <1992May21.192058.50532@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>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.


Again, it seems that you are implying that every concept that denotes
something in the real or imaginary world is grounded. That is to say,
what gives groundness ("real meaning") to symbols is their denotation.
But, that cannot be what Harnad means (read Christopher Green reply to
your earlier message). 
But if that is the case, Harnad and you can save all your troubles
with the symbol grounding problem, and adopt model theoretic semantics.
You may have some trouble with the imaginary world (unicorn), but possible
world semantics can come to your resquest.


Fernando Gomez


