Oesterreichisches Forschungsinstitut fuer Artificial Intelligence (OeFAI) Schottengasse 3, A-1010 Wien Tel.: +43-1-53361120, Fax: +43-1-5336112-77, Email: sec@ai.univie.ac.at ------------------------------------------------------------------------- VORTRAG ******* Prof.Dr.Stevan HARNAD Southampton University United Kingdom SYMBOL GROUNDING AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE The Symbol Grounding Problem concerns the question of how to connect meaningless symbols to what they mean, rather than to just further meaningless symbols, all systematically interpretable to an outside mind, but meaningless in and of themselves. Evolution has clearly solved this problem in the case of both natural language and the language of thought. How has it done so? Some very simple artificial- life simulations of the adaptive advantages of symbolic "theft" over sensorimotor "toil" will be presented as a hint of how and why this might have taken place. Zeit: Mittwoch, 19.Mai 1999, 18:30 Uhr pktl. Ort: OeFAI, Schottengasse 3, 1010 Wien 1. OESTERREICHISCHES FORSCHUNGSINSTITUT FUER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE o.Univ.-Prof.Dr.Robert Trappl