[ExI] digital simulations, descriptions and copies

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/1/22 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> --- On Thu, 1/21/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As I and others have said numerous times, it's quite
>> obvious that meaning could *only* come from the association of one
>> symbol or input with another symbol or input.
>
> If we want to know the meaning of a word we can look it up in the dictionary and see "one symbol associated with other symbols". That trivial fact does not interest me, nor should it interest you, unless of course you can show me that the dictionary itself actually understands the words it defines. In that case the dictionary has overcome the symbol grounding problem.

At some point, there must be an association between a symbol and one
of the special symbols which are generated by sensory data. Then the
symbol is "grounded".


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou