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--- abstract: |- It is unlikely that the systematic, compositional properties of formal symbol systems -- i.e., of computation -- play no role at all in cognition. However, it is equally unlikely that cognition is just computation, because of the symbol grounding problem (Harnad 1990): The symbols in a symbol system are systematically interpretable, by external interpreters, as meaning something, and that is a remarkable and powerful property of symbol systems. Cognition (i.e., thinking), has this property too: Our thoughts are systematically interpretable by external interpreters as meaning something. However, unlike symbols in symbol systems, thoughts mean what they mean autonomously: Their meaning does not consist of or depend on anyone making or being able to make any external interpretations of them at all. When I think "the cat is on the mat," the meaning of that thought is autonomous; it does not depend on YOUR being able to interpret it as meaning that (even though you could interpret it that way, and you would be right). altloc: - http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.iee.html chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: May 15 1995 conference: 'Institute of Electrical Engineers Colloquium on "Grounding Representations: Integration of Sensory Information in Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks,"' confloc: London contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Harnad given: Stevan honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 1995 date_type: published datestamp: 2001-06-19 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/15/93 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 1593 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/1593/1/harnad95.iee.html full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'cognition, computation, symbol grounding, neural networks ' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:41 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: TRUE referencetext: |2 Goldstone, Robert (1994) Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1994 Jun, v123 (n2):178-200. Harnad, S. (ed.) (1987) Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Harnad, S. (1990a) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346. [Reprinted in Hungarian Translation as "A Szimbolum-Lehorgonyzas Problemaja." Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle XLVIII-XLIX (32-33) 5-6: 365-383.] Harnad, S. (1990b) 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. (1992) Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition. In: A. Clarke and R. Lutz (Eds) Connectionism in Context Springer Verlag. Harnad, S. (1993) Grounding Symbols in the Analog World with Neural Nets. Think 2(1) 12 - 78 (Special issue on "Connectionism versus Symbolism," D.M.W. Powers & P.A. Flach, eds.). [Also reprinted in French translation as: "L'Ancrage des Symboles dans le Monde Analogique a l'aide de Reseaux Neuronaux: un Modele Hybride." In: Rialle V. et Payette D. (Eds) La Modelisation. LEKTON, Vol IV, No 2.] Harnad, S. (1993) 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. (1994) Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation: Cognition Isn't. Special Issue on "What Is Computation" Minds and Machines 4:379-390 Harnad, S. (1995) Grounding Symbolic Capacity in Robotic Capacity. In: Steels, L. and R. Brooks (eds.) The "artificial life" route to "artificial intelligence." Building Situated Embodied Agents. New Haven: Lawrence Erlbaum 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. (1995) Learned Categorical Perception in Neural Nets: Implications for Symbol Grounding. In: V. Honavar & L. Uhr (eds) Symbol Processors and Connectionist Network Models in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling: Steps Toward Principled Integration. pp. 191-206. Acadamic Press. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 8 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:38:54 subjects: - comp-sci-art-intel - comp-sci-mach-dynam-sys - comp-sci-neural-nets - percep-cog-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: Grounding symbols in sensorimotor categories with neural networks type: confpaper userid: 63 volume: ~