Artificial intelligence and cognitive science: Vol 4. Language and meaning in cognitive science: cognitive issues and semantic theory

This volume contains recent essays by leading authorities on different aspects of language, ranging from the computational underpinnings of syntactic and semantic properties to theories of conceptual and nonconceptual content. The first section deals with the nature and cognitive role of language itself, offering a survey of conflicting views and examining multiple perspectives on the role of language in human cognition. Section two explores the computational basis of linguistic behavior and displays a range of positions regarding language processing. Section three offers an array of recent semantic theories whose main feature is that they involve a notion of content partly constituted by the abilities of the systems to interact in specific ways with the world in which they are embedded. Section four focuses on the question of how to naturalize semantics.

Table of contents :

Introduction ..... vii

The Nature of Language

On the Nature, Use and Acquisition of Language     Noam Chomsky ..... 1

Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation    Andy Clark ..... 21

Rules of Language    Steven Pinker ..... 40

Language and Computation

Can Machines Think?    Daniel C. Dennett ..... 47

Understanding Understanding: Syntactic Semantics and Computational Cognition    William J. Rapaport ..... 73

Understanding Natural Language    John Haugeland ..... 113

Language and Experience

Individualism, Computation, and Perceptual Content    Frances Egan ..... 127

Externalist Explanation    Christopher Peacocke ..... 145

Ecological Content    Josefa Toribio ..... 173

Naturalized Semantics

Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology    Ned Block ..... 203

Putting Information to Work    Fred Dretske ..... 268

Biosemantics    Ruth Garrett Millikan ..... 281

Acknowledgments ..... 299