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Article 7043 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: forbis@carson.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Message-ID: <1992Sep25.201107.1628@u.washington.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 92 20:11:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Sep25.201107.1628
References: <1992Sep23.185020.2693@spss.com> <1992Sep24.011517.22127@Princeton.EDU> <19sosiINNc3j@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
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Disclaimer:
I have no intent to speak for anyone else in this article.  The views I express
are mine alone.

In article <19sosiINNc3j@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> wolfgang@cats.ucsc.edu (Robert F Dougherty) writes:
>   To address your human-hooked-up-to-virtural-world-simulator example- 
>what if we managed to bypass the transducers (strictly speaking, the 
>transducers are only one part of the very first input neurons- eg. just
>the photochemically-lined membranes of the receptors.  The rest of the 
>receptor is not a transducer.)  If the human were hooked up to the VR
>simulator in this way, would she loose grounding?

It seems to me that a criterion for transduction (as meant here) is a situated
entity with a model of its situation.  I believe an entity can be said to have
its model grounded in the environment when changes in the environment (as
sensed by the entity('s tranducers)) are reflected by changes in the entities
model of its environment.  In this way, when a human is experiencing a VR, her
or his model is grounded to the VR rather than the environment in which the
VR is implemented.  One's symbols are not grounded to reality when one is
dreaming except to the extent that they are derived from one's contemporaneous
experiences of reality.

>-Robert Dougherty   
>University of California at Santa Cruz
>Vision Research
> 


