JFS: Rich,
I have not had the time to
respond to the long thread about fruit flies, etc. I'll get back to that
later.
RGC: Thanks John, your critiques and reviews are excellent
and valuable, so I look forward to your comments.
JFS: Although I have a high
regard for most of the work by Peter Gärdenfors, his three-way distinction in
that paper misses a few hundred other ways that should be considered:
PG in "SYMBOLIC, CONCEPTUAL
AND SUBCONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATIONS"
> Most adherents of the
symbolic paradigm are semantic realists in the
> sense that the
“meaning” of a predicate or a sentence is determined by
> mapping it to the external
world (or, to make it even more remote from
> a cognitive system, to a
plethora of possible worlds). The world (and
> the mapping) is assumed to
exist independently of any relation to a
> cognitive subject.
First of all, every language,
natural or artificial, consists of symbols. Therefore, every theory of
language must, at some level, be symbolic.
RGC: While that is true, PG is trying to show that the
symbolic approach has some serious limitations, such as the grounding problem
among many others. But he seems to agree that symbolic descriptions are necessary,
just not sufficient.
JFS: Second, the following
sentence by PG is a statement of strong AI, which even most AI people don't
believe: "The symbolic approach starts from the assumption that cognitive
systems should be modeled by Turing machines."
RGC: I took that to mean mathematically modeled by TMs,
but NOBODY except mathematicians and philosophers with lots of time on their
hands actually programs TMs. We all write software, whether procedural or
declarative, in our own heads. That is where meaning is organized and stored.
JFS: Third concepts are
symbolic, even when they aren't expressed in language. The conceptual version
that PG discusses represents concepts by vectors, which are inadequate for
representing nearly all complex language usage -- both formal and informal.
Fourth, the term 'subconceptual'
includes much more than the computational methods called 'connectionist'.
Finally, PG does make some
statements that I would agree with, but his terminology (based on the
trichotomy in that article) tends to confuse the issues.
RGC: Yes, but we have seen that terminology problem in
the ontology group as well. Little clusters of people can agree on small
terminologies, but when the larger population is included, terminology is more
like fantasy than fact.
JFS: In short, I would not
recommend that paper as a step toward clarifying the issues raised in the
fruit-fly thread.
John
RGC: However, I am getting some good viewpoints from PG
on how to resolve the issues he raises.
Thanks for those useful points,
Sincerely,
Rich
Cooper,
Rich Cooper,
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2015 1:15 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantics of Natural Languages
Rich,
I have not had the time to respond to the long thread
about fruit flies, etc. I'll get back to that later. Although I have a high
regard for most of the work by Peter Gärdenfors, his three-way distinction in
that paper misses a few hundred other ways that should be considered:
PG in "SYMBOLIC, CONCEPTUAL AND SUBCONCEPTUAL
REPRESENTATIONS"
> Most adherents of the symbolic paradigm are semantic
realists in the
> sense that the “meaning” of a predicate
or a sentence is determined by
> mapping it to the external world (or, to make it
even more remote from
> a cognitive system, to a plethora of possible
worlds). The world (and
> the mapping) is assumed to exist independently of
any relation to a
> cognitive subject.
First of all, every language, natural or artificial,
consists of symbols. Therefore, every theory of language must, at some level,
be symbolic.
Second, the following sentence by PG is a statement of
strong AI, which even most AI people don't believe: "The symbolic approach
starts from the assumption that cognitive systems should be modeled by Turing
machines."
Third concepts are symbolic, even when they aren't
expressed in language. The conceptual version that PG discusses represents
concepts by vectors, which are inadequate for representing nearly all complex
language usage -- both formal and informal.
Fourth, the term 'subconceptual' includes much more than
the computational methods called 'connectionist'.
Finally, PG does make some statements that I would agree
with, but his terminology (based on the trichotomy in that article) tends to
confuse the issues.
In short, I would not recommend that paper as a step
toward clarifying the issues raised in the fruit-fly thread.
John