Cogprints

Does the Mind Piggy-Back on Robotic and Symbolic Capacity?

Harnad, Stevan (1994) Does the Mind Piggy-Back on Robotic and Symbolic Capacity? [Journal (Paginated)]

Full text available as:

[img] HTML
54Kb

Abstract

Cognitive science is a form of "reverse engineering" (as Dennett has dubbed it). We are trying to explain the mind by building (or explaining the functional principles of) systems that have minds. A "Turing" hierarchy of empirical constraints can be applied to this task, from t1, toy models that capture only an arbitrary fragment of our performance capacity, to T2, the standard "pen-pal" Turing Test (total symbolic capacity), to T3, the Total Turing Test (total symbolic plus robotic capacity), to T4 (T3 plus internal [neuromolecular] indistinguishability). All scientific theories are underdetermined by data. What is the right level of empirical constraint for cognitive theory? I will argue that T2 is underconstrained (because of the Symbol Grounding Problem and Searle's Chinese Room Argument) and that T4 is overconstrained (because we don't know what neural data, if any, are relevant). T3 is the level at which we solve the "other minds" problem in everyday life, the one at which evolution operates (the Blind Watchmaker is no mind-reader either) and the one at which symbol systems can be grounded in the robotic capacity to name and manipulate the objects their symbols are about. I will illustrate this with a toy model for an important component of T3 -- categorization -- using neural nets that learn category invariance by "warping" similarity space the way it is warped in human categorical perception: within-category similarities are amplified and between-category similarities are attenuated. This analog "shape" constraint is the grounding inherited by the arbitrarily shaped symbol that names the category and by all the symbol combinations it enters into. No matter how tightly one constrains any such model, however, it will always be more underdetermined than normal scientific and engineering theory. This will remain the ineliminable legacy of the mind/body problem.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Subjects:Computer Science > Dynamical Systems
Psychology > Perceptual Cognitive Psychology
ID Code:1594
Deposited By: Harnad, Stevan
Deposited On:19 Jun 2001
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:54

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Dennett, D.C. (in press) Cognitive Science as Reverse Engineering: Several Meanings of "Top Down"

and "Bottom Up." In: Prawitz, D., Skyrms, B. & Westerstahl, D. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 9th

International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. North Holland.

Andrews, J., Livingston, K., Harnad, S. & Fischer, U. (in prep.) Learned Categorical Perception in

Human Subjects: Implications for Symbol Grounding.

Catania, A.C. & Harnad, S. (eds.) (1988) The Selection of Behavior. The Operant Behaviorism of BF

Skinner: Comments and Consequences. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dietrich, E. (1990) Computationalism. Social Epistemology 4: 135 - 154.

Fodor, J. A. (1975) The language of thought New York: Thomas Y. Crowell

Fodor, J. A. & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1988) Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical appraisal.

Cognition 28: 3 - 71.

Harnad, S. (1982a) Neoconstructivism: A unifying theme for the cognitive sciences. In: Language,

mind and brain (T. Simon & R. Scholes, eds., Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum), 1 - 11.

Harnad, S. (1982b) Consciousness: An afterthought. Cognition and Brain Theory 5: 29 - 47.

Harnad, S. (1984) What are the scope and limits of radical behaviorist theory? The Behavioral and

Brain Sciences 7: 720 -721.

Harnad, S. (ed.) (1987) Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Harnad, S. (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Artificial

Intelligence 1: 5-25.

Harnad, S. (1990a) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346.

Harnad, S. (1990b) Against Computational Hermeneutics. (Invited commentary on Eric Dietrich's

Computationalism) Social Epistemology 4: 167-172.

Harnad, S. (1990c) Lost in the hermeneutic hall of mirrors. Invited Commentary on: Michael Dyer:

Minds, Machines, Searle and Harnad. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 2:

321 - 327.

Harnad, S. (1990d) Symbols and Nets: Cooperation vs. Competition. Review of: S. Pinker and J.

Mehler (Eds.) (1988) Connections and Symbols Connection Science 2: 257-260.

Harnad, S. (1991) Other bodies, Other minds: A machine incarnation of an old philosophical problem.

Minds and Machines 1: 43-54.

Harnad, S. (1992a) Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition. In: A. Clarke and R. Lutz

(Eds) Connectionism in Context Springer Verlag.

Harnad, S. (1992b) The Turing Test Is Not A Trick: Turing Indistinguishability Is A Scientific

Criterion. SIGART Bulletin 3(4) (October) 9 - 10.

Harnad, S. (1993a) Grounding Symbols in the Analog World with Neural Nets. Think 2: 12 - 78

(Special Issue on "Connectionism versus Symbolism" D.M.W. Powers & P.A. Flach, eds.).

Harnad, S. (1993b) Artificial Life: Synthetic Versus Virtual. Artificial Life III. Proceedings, Santa Fe

Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Volume XVI.

Harnad, S. (1993c) The Origin of Words: A Psychophysical Hypothesis In Durham, W &

Velichkovsky B (Eds.) Muenster: Nodus Pub. [Presented at Zif Conference on Biological and Cultural

Aspects of Language Development. January 20 - 22, 1992 University of Bielefeld]

Harnad, S. (1993d) Symbol Grounding is an Empirical Problem: Neural Nets are Just a Candidate

Component. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. NJ:

Erlbaum

Harnad S. (1993e) Discussion (passim) In: Bock, G. & Marsh, J. (Eds.) Experimental and Theoretical

Studies of Consciousness. CIBA Foundation Symposium 174. Chichester: Wiley

Harnad, S. (1993f) Turing Indistinguishability and the Blind Watchmaker. Presented at London

School of Economics Conference of "Evolution and the Human Sciences" June 1993.

Harnad, S. (1993g) Problems, Problems: The Frame Problem as a Symptom of the Symbol

Grounding Problem. PSYCOLOQUY 4(34) frame-problem.11.

Harnad, S., Doty, R.W., Goldstein, L., Jaynes, J. & Krauthamer, G. (eds.) (1977) Lateralization in

the nervous system. New York: Academic Press.

Harnad, S., Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1991) Categorical Perception and the Evolution of Supervised

Learning in Neural Nets. In: Working Papers of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Machine Learning of

Natural Language and Ontology (DW Powers & L Reeker, Eds.) pp. 65-74. Presented at Symposium

on Symbol Grounding: Problems and Practice, Stanford University, March 1991; also reprinted as

Document D91-09, Deutsches Forschungszentrum fur Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH Kaiserslautern

FRG.

Harnad, S. Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1994) Learned Categorical Perception in Neural Nets:

Implications for Symbol Grounding. In: V. Honavar & L. Uhr (eds) Symbol Processing and

Connectionist Network Models in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling: Steps Toward

Principled Integration. (in press)

Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. & Lancaster, J. B. (eds.) (1976) Origins and Evolution of Language and

Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280.

Hayes, P., Harnad, S., Perlis, D. & Block, N. (1992) Virtual Symposium on Virtual Mind. Minds and

Machines 2: 217-238.

Lewis, H. & C. Papadimitriou. (1981) Elements of the Theory of Computation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall).

Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83: 435 - 451.

Nagel, T. (1986) The view from nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.

Newell, A. (1980) Physical Symbol Systems. Cognitive Science 4: 135 - 83

Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1984) Computation and cognition. Cambridge MA: MIT/Bradford

Searle, J. R. (1980) Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417-424.

Turing, A. M. (1964) Computing machinery and intelligence. In: Minds and machines. A. Anderson

(ed.), Engelwood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.

Turing, A. M. (1990) Mechanical intelligence (D. C. Ince, ed.) North Holland

Zeki, S. (1990) Colour Vision and Functional Specialisation in the Visual Cortex. Amsterdam: Elsevier

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.