From nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU Thu Sep 17 09:24 EDT 1998 From: nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 09:24:24 -0400 (EDT) To: techreps@cs.Buffalo.EDU Subject: techrep: POST request Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4181 Comments: Note the date! I'd like TR # 96-26 if possible. ContactPerson: rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu Remote host: adara.cs.buffalo.edu Remote ident: rapaport ### Begin Citation ### Do not delete this line ### %R 96-26 %U /ftp/pub/WWW/faculty/rapaport/Papers/book.ps %A Rapaport, William J. %T Understanding Understanding: Semantics, Computation, and Cognition %D July 17, 1996 %I Department of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo %K syntax, semantics, cognition, computation, Chinese Room Argument, conceptual role semantics, holism, implementation, natural-language understanding, methodological solipsism, Helen Keller %Y I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; I.2.4 Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods ;I.2.7 Natural Language Processing; %X What does it mean to understand language? John Searle once said: "The Chinese Room shows what we knew all along: syntax by itself is not sufficient for semantics. (Does anyone actually deny this point, I mean straight out? Is anyone actually willing to say, straight out, that they think that syntax, in the sense of formal symbols, is really the same as semantic content, in the sense of meanings, thought contents, understanding, etc.?)." Elsewhere, I have argued "that (suitable) purely syntactic symbol-manipulation of a computational natural-language-understanding system's knowledge base suffices for it to understand natural language." The fundamental thesis of the present book is that understanding is recursive: "Semantic" understanding is a correspondence between two domains; a cognitive agent understands one of those domains in terms of an antecedently understood one. But how is that other domain understood? Recursively, in terms of yet another. But, since recursion needs a base case, there must be a domain that is not understood in terms of another. So, it must be understood in terms of itself. How? Syntactically! In syntactically understood domains, some elements are understood in terms of others. In the case of language, linguistic elements are understood in terms of non-linguistic ("conceptual") yet internal elements. Put briefly, bluntly, and a bit paradoxically, semantic understanding is syntactic understanding. Thus, any cognitive agent--human or computer--capable of syntax (symbol manipulation) is capable of understanding language. The purpose of this book is to present arguments for this position, and to investigate its implications. Subsequent chapters discuss: models and semantic theories (with critical evaluations of work by Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener, Brian Cantwell Smith, and Marx W. Wartofsky); the nature of "syntactic semantics" (including the relevance of Antonio Damasio's cognitive neuroscientific theories); conceptual-role semantics (with critical evaluations of work by Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore, Gilbert Harman, David Lewis, Barry Loewer, William G. Lycan, Timothy C. Potts, and Wilfrid Sellars); the role of negotiation in interpreting communicative acts (including evaluations of theories by Jerome Bruner and Patrick Henry Winston); Hilary Putnam's and Jerry Fodor's views of methodological solipsism; implementation and its relationships with such metaphysical concepts as individuation, instantiation, exemplification, reduction, and supervenience (with a study of Jaegwon Kim's theories); John Searle's Chinese-Room Argument and its relevance to understanding Helen Keller (and vice versa); and Herbert Terrace's theory of naming as a fundamental linguistic ability unique to humans. Throughout, reference is made to an implemented computational theory of cognition: a computerized cognitive agent implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. SNePS is: symbolic (or "classical"; as opposed to connectionist), propositional (as opposed to being a taxonomic or "inheritance" hierarchy), and fully intensional (as opposed to (partly) extensional), with several types of interrelated inference and belief-revision mechanisms, sensing and effecting mechanisms, and the ability to make, reason about, and execute plans.