Reference without causal links
Aaron Sloman · European Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 1986
This enlarges on earlier work attempting to show in a general way how it might be possible for a machine to use symbols with ‘non-derivative’ semantics. It elaborates on the author’s earlier suggestion that computers understand symbols referring to their own internal ‘virtual’ worlds. A machine that grasps predicate calculus notation can use a set of axioms to give a partial, implicitly defined, semantics to non-logical symbols. Links to other symbols defined by direct causal connections within the machine reduce ambiguity. Axiom systems for which the machine’s internal states do not form a model give a basis for reference to an external world without using external sensors and motors.