title: Symbol Grounding and the Symbolic Theft Hypothesis
creator: Cangelosi, Angelo
creator: Greco, Alberto
creator: Harnad, Stevan
subject: Perceptual Cognitive Psychology
description: Computational simulations are used to model the following: (1) category learning through sensorimotor trial and error ("sensorimotor toil") and how it generates categorical perception (decreased between-category similarity and increased within-category similarity); (2) symbol grounding (the connection between symbols and the sensorimotor categories that they name); (3) the origins of language as the capacity to acquire categories indirectly, by definition alone ("symbolic theft"); and (4) the evolutionary advantage of acquiring categories by this symbolic theft instead of sensorimotor toil.
publisher: Springer, London
contributor: Cangelosi, A
contributor: Parisi, D
date: 2002
type: Book Chapter
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: http://cogprints.org/2132/3/harnad01.cangelosi-greco.pdf
identifier:   Cangelosi, Angelo and Greco, Alberto and Harnad, Stevan  (2002) Symbol Grounding and the Symbolic Theft Hypothesis.  [Book Chapter]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/2132/