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Add draft on language grounding

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Dimitri Lozeve 2020-02-03 08:20:10 +01:00
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title: "Reading Notes: \"The Symbol Grounding Problem\", Stevan Harnad"
date: 2020-02-02
---
cite:harnad1990_symbol_groun_probl defined the /symbol grounding
problem/, which is one of the most influential issues in natural
language problems since the 1980s. The issue is to determine how a
formal language system, consisting in simple symbols, can be imbued
with any /meaning/.
From the abstract:
#+begin_quote
How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system can be
made /intrinsic/ to the system, rather than just parasitic on the
meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol
tokens, manipulated solely on the basis of their (arbitrary) shapes,
can be grounded in anything but other meaningless symbols?
#+end_quote
In this landmark paper, Harnad makes the issue explicit, in its
context of cognitivism and competing theories of mind and
intelligence. He then proposes an original solution based on a
combination of symbolic and connectionist properties. The problem
itself is still highly relevant to today's NLP advances, where the
issue of extracting /meaning/ is still not solved.
# cf Gary Marcus, /Rebooting AI/, and post on /The Gradient/
* What is the symbol grounding problem?
** Context: cognitivism, symbolism, connectionism
/Cognitivism/ is the general framework in which all experimental
psychology takes place. It replaced old-fashioned /behaviorism/,
replacing it by an empirical science allowing to question the inner
workings of brains and minds.
Behaviorism restrained scientific inquiries to external behavior,
explicitly forbidding to make theories about what goes on inside the
mind. Cognitivism allowed the scientist to make hypotheses about
unobservable phenomenons, provided they made predictions testable in
an experimental setting.
"Meaning" is one such unobservable phenomenon.
** Exposing the issue: thought experiments
* What the human mind does, and what AIs could do
* References