Connectionist symbol processing: any progress?

[Brian Hazlehurst]

Dave Touretsky's question about the state of research in 
connectionist symbol processing has elicited interesting
responses showing that some interpret the problem as
computational, some see the problem as biological, while
others see the problem as more narrowly neurological.  To this
mix, let me add a view that the problem of symbols is (also) 
social and historical.  If this idea interests you, I invite 
you to read a recent publication:


The Emergence of Propositions from the Co-ordination of
	Talk and Action in a Shared World

	Brian Hazlehurst     brianh at shn.net
	Edwin Hutchins       hutchins at cogsci.ucsd.edu


Abstract:

	We present a connectionist model that demonstrates
how propositional structure can emerge from the interactions
among members of a community of simple cognitive agents.
We first describe a process in which agents coordinating
their actions and verbal productions with each other in
a shared world leads to the development of propositional
structures.  We then present a simulation model which
implements the process for generating propositions from
scratch.
	We report and discuss the behavior of the model in
terms of its ability to produce three properties of 
propositions: (1) a coherent lexicon characterized by 
shared form-meaning mappings; (2) conventional structure
in the sequence of forms; (3) the predication of spatial
facts.  We show that these properties do not emerge when
a single individual learns the task alone and conclude that
the properties emerge from the demands of the communication
task rather than from anything inside the individual agents.
We then show that the shared structural principles can be
described as a grammar, and discuss the implications of this
demonstration for theories concerning the origins of the
structure of language.


In:  K. Plunket (Ed.), Language Acquisition and Connectionism.
Special Issue of *Language and Cognitive Processes*, 1998, 
13 (2/3), 373-424.




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Brian Hazlehurst
Chief Scientist
Sapient Health Network
brianh at shn.net
www.shn.net
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