and

Moderated Session: Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez

Mei:CogSci Comenius University Bratislava Supervisor: Martin Takač

Semiotics Cog. Semantics & Cog. Theories of Representation:

enactive

appr

oach

Oct 1st, 2015

Image Source: http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/illustrations/bold-black-and-white-illustrations-by-sit-haiiro/

https://www.behance.net/gallery/Explaining-Semiotics-Infographic/9474813

"Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations.

Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world.”

argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment.

ENACTIVISM

OUTLINE •  The Text (2 min) •  The Key Points? (3 min)

•  Student Questions (5 min)

•  Breakout group discussions (30 min)

•  Discussion in plenum (50 min)

4

THE TEXT •  Nehaniv, C. L. (2000). The making of

meaning in societies: Semiotic and information-theoretic background to the evolution of communication. Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Adaptive Behavior, 73-84.

Background: Mathematician http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/~comqcln//

http://dai.fmph.uniba.sk/courses/CSCTR/

SOME KEY POINTS? •  Notions of meaning and information

•  “meaningful information for a particular agent is information that is, in a statistical sense, useful for the agent in achieving its goal”

•  Animals are not concerned with truth, but [... ] with survival

•  “If production of the signal does not on average benefit the receiver, then this is called misinformation.”

•  Interaction games, Language games, Following, Discrimination games,…

•  Innateness, individual learning and social aspects

•  Degrees of communication: built-in at outset? •  Problems: deixis, predication, compositionality,

grammar > never demonstrated in robotic or SW-systems

STUDENT QUESTIONS 1 1) Interaction versus instruction?

The author mentions studies in which animals, e.g. parrots or chimpanzees, acquire certain linguistic abilities through social interaction with humans (section 5, paragraph 4). But what is the difference between interaction and instruction? If meaning arises from embodied interaction between agents, which role does the power relation between the two agents play? What if the relationship is fairly hierarchical, as can be assumed in the process of interaction/instruction between a human (animal) and an(other) animal?

2) Emergence

Two contrasting understandings of the term “emergence” are mentioned in the paper (section 8, paragraph 3).

In view of the multitude of biological, social and other (interacting) factors that have potentially contributed to the evolution of language, is it more likely that the emergence of language is simply too complex to be ever fully understood, or rather that “not enough effort has been made in finding explanatory mechanisms” (Minsky 1996)?

STUDENT QS 2 •  Difference (or relationship) between association, predication, and

modification? Examples? •  "shared meaning requires shared experience in a social setting"- Can there

exist a set of universal meanings? How can we account for cross-cultural communication?

•  Why should one completely abandon Platonist notion of universal, external meaning? At least some of the meanings could be seen as context (or agent) independent as in formal logic, maths, computer languages.

•  How much does selective pressure contribute to convergence to the same meaning in societies nowadays?

•  What factors determine which meanings will "win" in the process of convergence if agents start with different/conflicting ones?

•  Why usefulness is considered to be a defining characteristic of meaning? •  Concept of a “dry” and “wet” information. Is all information, operated by a

machine, “dry" by default? Does the situation change, if the information is used in a machine context, i.e. it could be analysed and further used only by machine, not a human?

STUDENT QS 3 1.  Not sure if I correctly spied some kind of self-reference paradox

here, but isn't it contradictory to assume the impossibility of a god's eye view when trying to establish a theory of meaning, by making such a constraint that does demand a god's eye view in order for the theory to be universal and not relative to our (understanding of) meaning? In short: does this constraint also apply to the meaning of this theory? (This would of course not be a problem if we were either talking about a system of which our theory itself is not a part of, i.e. some sort of subset of meaning, or if we abstain from the claim of universal validity for this theory. But when intending to talk about the general laws of the evolution of meaning, neither seems to be the case: such a theory will necessarily also talk about its own meaning.)

2.  I find it counter-intuitive that the definition of communication such as given by Bradbury and Vehrencamp (1998) is based on a pragmatic notion of information, where "misinformation" is information that the receiver does on average not benefit from, while in "true" communication both sender and receiver benefit from information exchange. Intuitively, the truth content of information shouldn't depend on its utility for any of the participants of the communication. Would it not make more sense to assume a reversed causal relation? If not, how could such a basis be justified?

STUDENT QS 4 1) Regarding shared meaning: Is it true that it always requires shared experience in a social setting? Could we think of other forms of obtaining the information? (reading books, observation, narratives/story-telling,..) 2) How would levels of competition between/within groups influence the emerging communication system? This is not explicitly considered in the text. Does communication have to be goal-oriented? Isn't it possible to think of a social function of communication that is less goal-oriented but rather process-oriented? One that could be considered "atmospheric" or "therapeutic"...like "small talk", chatter and gossip, communication exchanges as social grooming. 1) Wittgensteins conception of meaning. Discussion about language-thoughts dynamic with Wittgenstein in mind. 2) Shared meaning: absolutely shared meaning..? (Can we completely understand the subjectivity of the other person; can we really have a fundamentally shared meaning?) 1) Why should benefit to both parties be necessary for communication? (refers to the definition) 2) Since culture affects the making of meaning, is meaning necessarily useful for the agent?

STUDENT QS 5 1) What is the basis of assumption that there are no “specific, atomic symbols or classes of symbols to which all agents may have access”; can there be an innate predisposition?

2) Emergence of meaning: formal vs functional models of language.

1) Is there the possibility of an universal concept of meaning, disregarding/ignoring the agent (and subsequently the environment)?

2) Is it true, that in true communication, sender and receiver both benefit from information exchange or does this only refer to the non-human animal domain?

Q CATEGORIES •  Clarification:

•  Dry-wet •  Difference/Examples: association - predication - modification? •  Shared meaning: definition of communication

•  Hierarchy and selective pressures, Competition of meaning •  Emergence of meaning: too complex or not enough effort? •  Challenging statements made:

•  No external meaning? •  Shared meaning req shared experience? Subjectivity? •  Definition ”Misinformation" is information that the receiver

does on average not benefit from? Benefitting of both parties? •  Are there no “specific, atomic symbols or classes of symbols

to which all agents may have access”? •  Usefulness as criterion?

TIME TO BREAKOUT! •  Get together in groups of 3-4 people

•  Discuss issues

•  After 30 mins report back to plenum, please.

…Pretty Please.

PLENUM TIME

15 THANK YOU!

https://hugehill.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/media-semiotics-2.gif