Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language

Harnad, S. (2002) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language. In: Computationalism: New Directions, pp. 143-158, MIT Press.

Download

HTML
43Kb

Abstract

Many special problems crop up when evolutionary theory turns, quite naturally, to the question of the adaptive value and causal role of consciousness in human and nonhuman organisms. One problem is that -- unless we are to be dualists, treating it as an independent nonphysical force -- consciousness could not have had an independent adaptive function of its own, over and above whatever behavioral and physiological functions it "supervenes" on, because evolution is completely blind to the difference between a conscious organism and a functionally equivalent (Turing Indistinguishable) nonconscious "Zombie" organism: In other words, the Blind Watchmaker, a functionalist if ever there was one, is no more a mind reader than we are. Hence Turing-Indistinguishability = Darwin-Indistinguishability. It by no means follows from this, however, that human behavior is therefore to be explained only by the push-pull dynamics of Zombie determinism, as dictated by calculations of "inclusive fitness" and "evolutionarily stable strategies." We are conscious, and, more important, that consciousness is piggy-backing somehow on the vast complex of unobservable internal activity -- call it "cognition" -- that is really responsible for generating all of our behavioral capacities. Hence, except in the palpable presence of the irrational (e.g., our sexual urges) where distal Darwinian factors still have some proximal sway, it is as sensible to seek a Darwinian rather than a cognitive explanation for most of our current behavior as it is to seek a cosmological rather than an engineering explanation of an automobile's behavior. Let evolutionary theory explain what shaped our cognitive capacity (Steklis & Harnad 1976; Harnad 1996, but let cognitive theory explain our resulting behavior.

Creators:	Stevan Harnad
Editors:	M. Scheutz
Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	language, evolution, categorisation, learning, symbol grounding
Research Group:	Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia
Deposited On:	19 Jun 2003 by Harnad, Stevan
Alternative Locations:	http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00..., http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harna...
ID Code:	7714
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2009 18:30
Performance Indicator:	EZ~01~01~07

Tools

Look up in Google Scholar

Metadata

Download Statistics

Last month

Last year

Members of ECS may view the download statistics dashboard for this record.

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in this archive you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Corrections

Repository Staff Only: item control page