the dictionary as mirror of the mind stevan harnad with collaborators: alexandre blondin-massé...
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The Dictionary as Mirror of the Mind
Stevan Harnad
with collaborators:
Alexandre Blondin-Massé
Guillaume Chicoisne
Yassine Gargouri
Odile Marcotte
Olivier Picard
What is cognition?
The activity of whatever mechanism generates performance capacity:
human
(and human-like, animal, machine)
know-how and "know-that"
According to ‘Computationalism’:
Cognition is just a form computation
i.e., formal symbol manipulation
The Symbol Grounding Problem
The Chinese/Chinese
dictionary-go-round
Hence
Cognition is not just computation
Meaning is not just definition
Dynamical systems
and
sensorimotor grounding
Concepts:
Formal vs.
Mental (Neural)
What are concepts?
Categories and names of categories
What are categories?
To categorize
is to do the right thing
with the right kind of thing.
A cognizer is an autonomous sensorimotor system that
categorizes
Miscategorization has consequences
Categories are classes of objects, events, properties, actions, or states
with invariant features
some (all? most? many? enough?) of them sensorimotor features
discernible by a categorizer
allowing the categorizer to categorize correctly
Categories have extensions and intensions
setmembership/inclusion
Vanishing intersections:Categories are not just
sensorimotor either
Category Acquisition
Implicit and explicit learning
Implicit vs Explicit Learning
= + + + …
Names and propositions
= +
“ ‘ZEBRA’ = HORSE + STRIPES ”
applered apple
apple (is) red
setsmembership/inclusion
Doing, naming, describing and defining
Using a word and defining a word
Definition and introspection
Cognitive science is making the implicit explicit
Our brains contain an implicit dictionary
that enables us to name things
and to use words
and (sometimes) to define the words we use
Category Learning and Categorical Perception
Inborn and learned sensorimotor invariants
Cangelosi & Harnad 2002
Implicit vs Explicit Learning
= +
“ ‘ZEBRA’ = HORSE + STRIPES ”
