Perceptually grounded meaning creation

Abstract

The paper proposes a mechanism for the spontaneous formation of perceptually grounded meanings under the selectionist pressure of a discrimination task. The mechanism is defined formally and the results of some simulation experiments are reported. Keywords: origins of meanings, self-organization, distributed agents, open systems. 1 Introduction The research reported here is part of a larger research program to understand the origins of language and meaning using complex systems mechanisms such as self-organisation, co-evolution, and level formation [5]. This paper focuses on the meaning creation process. A theoretical model is proposed to explain how an autonomous agent may originate new meanings. The agent is autonomous in the sense that its ontology is not explicitly put in by a designer, nor is there any explicit instruction. For the purpose of this paper, meaning is defined as a conceptualisation or categorisation of reality which is relevant from the viewpoint of the agent. Me...

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