Reality: A Prerequisite to Meaningful Representation

Abstract

Symbol grounding has been put forward as a candidate solution to the problem of associating intrinsic meaning obtained from sensorimotor data, to the arbitrary symbols that are so common in the cognitive domain. This pager focuses on the notion of how intrinsic meaning may be acquired and represented within an artificial cognitive system and considers how this task is influenced by varying the initial representations of sensory data and also the internal mechanics of the learning mechanism employed. The task of 'colour naming' which involves grounding sensory representations of words (linguistic input) using sensory representations of colour (visual input), is described and it is shown, using a number of connectionist models, how the initial representation of colour effects the acquisition of the 'colour naming' ability. Results from the use of both psychologically based and other purely arbitrary representations lead to the conclusion that the representations used within cognitive architectures should possess structure that is lawfully related to the objects being represented, or alternatively representation must pay close attention to reality.